Ask HN: My house might burn down in the next 24 hours. Suggestions?

Re:Ask HN: My house might burn down in the next 24 hours. Su... by jjcm on Wednesday October 11, 2017 @12:37AM (#15447316)

As someone who's had all their stuff be burned, the one thing I would say is this - too many things that we saved were replaceable. The things that we missed were the ones that weren't. Even though you have an expensive fancy camera that you want to save, if that comes at the cost of leaving behind the quilt your grandmother made, leave the camera. Especially if you have fire insurance. Money can replace pricey things. It can't replace sentimental ones.

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Re:Ask HN: My house might burn down in the next 24 hours. Su... by KozmoNau7 on Wednesday October 11, 2017 @04:28AM (#15448167)

The two most important things to save are data and personal irreplaceable items.

Data is easily saved by uploading to cloud storage, preferably more than one service. You should already be doing this, Google Drive is 15GB free, Dropbox is 2GB free. Usually that's enough for the most important documents. Google Photos has unlimited storage as long as your pictures are 16MP or less.

I'll admit that I don't have an overview of my irreplaceable items. Maybe I should do a mental list when I get home today.

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Re:Ask HN: My house might burn down in the next 24 hours. Su... by bspn on Wednesday October 11, 2017 @10:15AM (#15449920)

This is great advice, which surprisingly few people follow.

A few years back I scanned all of our personal records, tax returns, visas, dog vaccinations etc and created a dedicated Box account with a Google Drive backup. It was a massive undertaking at the time, but now whenever we receive something new it's a pretty painless task to scan it and upload it to cloud storage.

An added bonus is that after years of stockpiling paper we now have virtually no paper records anymore other than the things that absolutely have to be: passports, SSNs, birth certificates etc.

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Re:Ask HN: My house might burn down in the next 24 hours. Su... by akuji1993 on Wednesday October 11, 2017 @10:43AM (#15450150)

The moment there's a longer blackout, you guys are out in the open. Nice.

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Re:Ask HN: My house might burn down in the next 24 hours. Su... by literallycancer on Wednesday October 11, 2017 @10:38AM (#15450106)

Flickr has 1TB free for photos.

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Re:Ask HN: My house might burn down in the next 24 hours. Su... by Can_Not on Thursday October 12, 2017 @01:57PM (#15459838)

https://mega.nz/ does 50GB free

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Re:Ask HN: My house might burn down in the next 24 hours. Su... by Carl_Platt on Wednesday October 11, 2017 @02:14AM (#15447638)

This is true. A friends parents house burned to the ground. At their advanced age, the only thing they complained about were all the sentimental items they lost. You can always buy a new camera, but man, those wedding pictures and ornaments aren't quite as replaceable.

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Re:Ask HN: My house might burn down in the next 24 hours. Su... by rmc on Wednesday October 11, 2017 @04:33AM (#15448183)

Especially for older people. Back in the day they didn't have cameras as much and developing film was expensive. That wedding album might have the only photos you have of a relative that is now dead.

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Re:Ask HN: My house might burn down in the next 24 hours. Su... by Markoff on Wednesday October 11, 2017 @08:16AM (#15449106)

that's why ypu have Scan photos inside Google photos to backup them in cloud easily with smartphone without scanner

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Re:Ask HN: My house might burn down in the next 24 hours. Su... by rmc on Friday October 13, 2017 @05:36AM (#15464223)

Yes you should do that. But it's easy to forget to do that.

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Re:Ask HN: My house might burn down in the next 24 hours. Su... by roryisok on Wednesday October 11, 2017 @03:45AM (#15447966)

I think I'm going to do an inventory this weekend just in case something similar happens to me. I need to know what sentimental stuff to grab in a hurry

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Re:Ask HN: My house might burn down in the next 24 hours. Su... by VirtruTyler on Wednesday October 11, 2017 @09:26AM (#15449518)

Agreed. This exact scenario happened to me. I lost a great deal of things in the fire. The only thing I miss is the quilt my frandmother.made for me. I still get upset about it.

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Re:Ask HN: My house might burn down in the next 24 hours. Su... by sizzle on Wednesday October 11, 2017 @03:40PM (#15452747)

I'm feel for you, I lost my childhood photo albums in a garage fire. I still kick myself to this day :(

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