Most do not consider this, and most colleges don't advertise it. One option to to look at taking an exam to pass out of the required classes for a degree. So for a bachelor's degree look for classes that you know everything about and fit the degree requirement. Most colleges allow you to pay a fraction of the cost for a class, and allow you to take a single exam. If you pass, that is your grade, or some do just a pass/fail. However if you know most of what the college requires for their Bachelor's CS degree, you can get away with the degree for pennies. I haven't looked at my local college for awhile, but I know at one point I paid like $250 about 10 years ago and then took an exam. It takes some work and research, but could end up being your fastest and cheapest route! I would also recommend if you go this route to meet with the professors or chair of the school (CS of IS maybe) and let them know what you are doing. Most of them are very accommodating and understanding of people who work full time trying to get a degree

In all seriousness most people don't have that much data to backup. But I can see it might be possible, but it isn't going to be necesarrily cheap. Assuming that this data is a positively must KEEP, then using the 3-2-1 rule of backup here is what I would suggest. 1. Need to have a second synced copy. So you are going to have to purchase some kind of NAS or large storage device. You can go your own DIY route (FreeNAS) or BackBlaze storage Pod 3.0, or something like Drobo. Plenty of lower cost options out there. But it will cost some money to do it. 2. Use BackBlaze or CrashPlan for an offsite replication. There are no limits! I use BackBlaze for mine and have about 2 TB backed up there. It took about a week to get it all there because there are upload limitations by your ISP and by them, but it will eventually get it all. For $60 a year, you can't beat it! 3. Writable media (Blue-ray or DVD) is a viable option, as it is cheap but complicates recovery. And it has longevity issues. It should not be thrown out if keeping cost low is a priority. Also if the data is so rarely used, then this would be a better solution than paying for the energy and cost of hard drives. Other considerations: 1. Like any filing system, physical or digital it needs to be checked, purged and arranged on some kind of annual or semi-annual schedule. To get rid of stuff no longer needed, and to make sure you do not have duplicates, and to see if you are going to need more space this year. I simply have an internal 4TB drive that I use to sync data, a second drive for image backups of the computer, then I use backblaze for offsite storage. I know, I have 4 copies, but it makes me feel safe. 2. It seems like priorities haven't been established when it comes to retrieval. At times it appears Cost is your highest priority, then at others convenience. You won't be able to have an extremely convenient cheap solution. You need to decide which is the highest priority, and then the next and then the next.