Ask HN: How do you backup your files without depending on a third party service?

Ask HN: How do you backup your files without depending on a third party service?
125 by sbjs | 88 comments on Hacker News.
I'm using Github, Dropbox and iCloud, but this makes me nervous about my data's privacy and longevity for a number of reasons. Among the three services, I have ~700GB of data. But I got to thinking, aren't USB thumb sticks reliable and big enough nowadays to fit this much data? I could just buy two 512GB sticks and use rsync to backup to them a few times per week. This way I wouldn't have to lug around an awkward hard drive if I'm ever traveling. What strategy do you use to keep your data safe and private for the long term? Do you have a portable solution, or do you recommend something else?