Newbie question

You can dig through Glacier and other cold storage posts here and on the Internet. Opinions from here:

I don’t know if any backup programs give you any help in figuring out what files you need to get back from cold storage or even making the request for you, or if it’s always a manual process of analysis & retyping.

If up to you, the fewer the better, i.e. for disaster recovery you may prefer to do something like image with Macrium Reflect Free to a USB hard drive, then upload/track large images. Between image backups you can use Duplicati or something to inexpensive hot storage such as Backblaze B2 or Wasabi, whose cost might not be unbearable for smaller amounts of data. Some people even try to have a hybrid solution with older files backed up in a more economical way, and newer files backed up on hot storage. Duplicati does not yet have built-in support for that, but there are scripting solutions given in the forum if you’re interested.

Backup files only if modification date > certain date in the past

One drawback of big images in cold storage is that downloading can take a long time. Keeping some local backup can help with that, provided it’s not where the same disaster is likely to take out the local backup…

EDIT: Is this lots of data or multiple computers? Do you prefer simple backups or more configurable ones?