Ask HN: What's your approach to personal data archiving and backups?

Re:Ask HN: What's your approach to personal data archiving a... by NKosmatos on Monday September 13, 2021 @05:59PM (#28517437)

A good approach is to use the 3-2-1 backup strategy. You should have 3 copies of your data (1 working set and 2 backup copies) on 2 different media (disk, dvd, NAS, cloud…) with 1 copy off-site for disaster recovery (cloud, external disk at another location…). Depending on the type of data, on how paranoid you are and the budget available you could do extra variations. i.e. 4 set of data, different filesystem (NTFS, exFAT, btrfs, ZFS, ext4…), different disk manufacturers, different batches of hard disks, different NAS enclosures, different methods (soft RAID, H/W RAID, error correction…), encryption and storage in friends house and so on :-) If you can afford it buy a dual disk NAS and also use your spare 2.5 disks in external usb cases and synchronize your data every once in a while.

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Re:Ask HN: What's your approach to personal data archiving a... by m463 on Monday September 13, 2021 @07:04PM (#28518054)

I have given out this link countless times:

https://www.jwz.org/doc/backups.html

I love this line:

> "OMG, three drives is so expensive! That sounds like a hassle!"

> Shut up. I know things. You will listen to me. Do it anyway.

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Re:Ask HN: What's your approach to personal data archiving a... by vulcan01 on Monday September 13, 2021 @08:01PM (#28518474)

Warning to those who might be new to jwz's site - copy and paste that link into your browser, because if the Referer header is HN he serves an NSFW picture instead.

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Re:Ask HN: What's your approach to personal data archiving a... by ksec on Tuesday September 14, 2021 @01:25AM (#28520575)

You actually make me curious to see that pic but I clicked it and dont have that problem.

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Re:Ask HN: What's your approach to personal data archiving a... by NKosmatos on Tuesday September 14, 2021 @05:57AM (#28522420)

Here is the image in case anyone is interested: https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2016/hn.png I have to admit that Jamie (jwz) has done important things and has contributed a lot to many others but I have to disagree with most of what is mentioned in the page related to the backup procedures, but hey this is the web and anyone has its own views and ideas on what is best and on what to display to a redirected user from HN :-)

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Re:Ask HN: What's your approach to personal data archiving a... by kova12 on Tuesday September 14, 2021 @01:33AM (#28520610)

The advice this guy gives is far from ideal:

First, when drive fails, it often doesn't tell you right away. If you rsync --delete , there is high chance your deletions would copy. Same goes for corruption.

Second, keeping drive with potentially private data unencrypted is a liability. Especially offsite. Someone will steal it and all your private stuff is out. I am not even considering case when you store crypto on said PC

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Re:Ask HN: What's your approach to personal data archiving a... by toast0 on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @08:53AM (#28538473)

> Second, keeping drive with potentially private data unencrypted is a liability. Especially offsite. Someone will steal it and all your private stuff is out. I am not even considering case when you store crypto on said PC

Otoh, keeping your storage encrypted means losing your keys is losing your data. And your heirs are likely unable to access it.

You have to weigh your threats.

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Re:Ask HN: What's your approach to personal data archiving a... by m463 on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @02:42PM (#28542716)

I think people need to get a strategy - any strategy - before they can think about these sort of second-order details.

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