Users are buying 4TB–20TB HDDs to locally store open models like Llama 3.1 405B and Mistral Large 2?

Users are buying 4TB–20TB HDDs to locally store open models like Llama 3.1 405B and Mistral Large 2

The trend is driven by fears that HuggingFace could shut down or change access terms, as other platforms have before?

The trend is driven by fears that HuggingFace could shut down or change access terms, as other platforms have before

Compression methods (e.g., GGUF q4_k_m) help fit large models onto consumer drives, but sizes remain massive

Open Source

r/LocalLLaMA July 19, 2026

⚡Are you backing up 100GB+ open-weights models to local HDDs?

Deep Dive

A Reddit post by user JumpingJack79 asks whether HuggingFace can be taken for granted.

Key Points

Users are buying 4TB–20TB HDDs to locally store open models like Llama 3.1 405B and Mistral Large 2
The trend is driven by fears that HuggingFace could shut down or change access terms, as other platforms have before
Compression methods (e.g., GGUF q4_k_m) help fit large models onto consumer drives, but sizes remain massive

Centralized AI model distribution risks sudden loss; local archiving becomes essential for research continuity and open-access resilience.