datahoarder
Who are we?
We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.
We are one. We are legion. And we're trying really hard not to forget.
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Whatever you decide to do, please implement 3-2-1 backups (3 backups: 2 backups offline, 1 offsite). This will cost more obviously, but family data is important and its safety shouldn't be skimped on.
The 2 isn't two offline, it's two forms of media. Hard drive, optical, tape, etc., in case there's some defect or disaster that renders one unusable. The offsite one should probably be offline, but unless you're really paranoid, a cloud backup counts as one for each category. (But it needs to be a managed cloud backup, not just a copy in Google drive, because you want to be protected against accidental deletions.)
I see, thanks for clearing that up. In my situation, keeping a few terabytes on 3 hard drives and backing up to a reliable cloud copy (not sync, as you mentioned) is good enough for me. Optical media is impractical with the amount of data, and tape drives far too expensive for just a few TBs.