Ask HN: When was the last time you lost data?

Re:Ask HN: When was the last time you lost data? by codetrotter on Monday June 19, 2023 @09:13PM (#36398533)

Around 2011 I set up full disk encryption for the first time. The systems I did this on were some second hand computers that I had bought and installed FreeBSD on. The systems were very stable. Too stable! They were running for several weeks until one day when there was a power outage. When power came back I booted the machines up again and I promptly realised that I was not entirely sure about what the convoluted password I had chosen for full disk encryption was exactly.

I lost quite a bit of data that day.

It taught me to stop with silly 5|_|1357:7|_|7:0|\|5 and to use long passphrases instead. This ensures high entropy without the possibility of forgetting symbols chosen, because there are no symbols to remember.

It also taught me to frequently reboot my computers, so that I remember the passphrases to decrypt the disks.

I have a tool that I wrote and which I actively use myself for generating passphrases, it’s called Pgen and it’s open source at https://github.com/ctsrc/Pgen

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Re:Ask HN: When was the last time you lost data? by dave-at-koor on Tuesday June 20, 2023 @08:37PM (#36412804)

Nice tool.

I guess it's kind of a theme with data. It's like oxygen - taken for granted until you don't get enough. Or clean water. And incidents are so rare that we don't get good at handling them.

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