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Not trying to troll, but I see so many HN comments about backups and I just don't have this need anymore. What are people using traditional backup software like
by dcosson 10y ago
Not trying to troll, but I see so many HN comments about backups and I just don't have this need anymore. What are people using traditional backup software like time machine, carbon copy cloner, etc. for on their laptop these days?
I use google docs for all my docs and spreadsheets, occasionally I use excel or word or keynote for files but if I do I save the docs to my dropbox or google drive folder, I have my photos synced with google photos, my music is synced through itunes match (or I can sync my music library files to dropbox, or use spotify), all my code is in git repos pushed to github or bitbucket.
What else is there to back up? Is it a matter of not wanting to re-install apps manually to get your computer back to its current state? Or is it a matter of not wanting to pay for the extra storage space on dropbox?
- orionblastar 10y agoI agree cloud based backups like Dropbox just sync in the background. Got any souce code store it in Github or Bitbucket. Documents and source code doesn't take up much space. Unless you want music and video files which iTunes can always sync for you to your Apple mobile device. I use a USB hard drive to back up my Thunderbird and Firefox profiles. Also my downloads and other stuff too big for Dropbox. $100 for a 4T USB 3.0 hard drive is cheap.
- simonh 10y agoSync is not backup. If you corrupt or delete a file, the destructive action will get propagated as well. Time machine and many other backup systems gives you access to previous versions of files and folders.
- sametmax 10y ago- Some people don't want to use the cloud to store their stuff for privacy / ethic / commercial / legal reasons. - Some others have been burnt by the cloud failing them (corruption, data loss, copyright abuse, etc) and want an additional layer of security. - There are many activities that are fully not covered by the cloud, such as 3D / video / music edition, art in general, programming (all those dev envs)... - You may want / need to be able to be able to recover from a dataloss even if you are offline. - Some file types don't match the cloud sync paradigm very well such as system and configurations, non online game saves and all stuff that needs to be at a precise place on the system. - You got stuff you want to manipulate as files in dirs, not as an entry into app. Power users usually dislike the loss of control and freedom the apps imply. - You like to have 3 backup because of the rule "one on site, on off site". - You like to have all your backups at the same place. - You have collections off files that just don't fit in the cloud, such as Tera of Videos. - Sex tapes still need to be backed up, and you won't send that to your dropbox. - Some people still have a shitty internet connections and can't sync reliably. - It's less work to manage one backup than to setup all the parameters of all those apps to be sure they sync only what you want. - You read the licence for some sync plateform and couldn't decently click "I accept". - You got a NAS at home on which you plug your hard drive with the backups for the whole familly.
- saidajigumi 10y agoThe scenario you describe involves no true "backups". It's probably better to say that you only have original copies, albeit resilient to failure of local hardware. Cloud services have data-loss events, due to both technical and business reasons. They're vulnerable to a variety of SPOFs out of your control or visibility. I've known so many people over the decades who trusted some online provider to reliably store the only copy of critical data, only to be burned. Even providers that you would have thought should be bulletproof. My rule of thumb, based on data loss studies, is to have three copies of any critical data. Any cloud provider should only be considered to be one copy.
- notpeter 10y agoIt's not only paranoid people who keep offline backups, it's those that understand the threat models where data can be destroyed through logical or physical access to all storage locations. For arguments sake, I'll focus Google services. As I personally discovered recently, docs offers minimal protection for your data: 1. Docs shared with you (others are "owner") can disappear without notice. 2. Manual clones are the only way to keep a copy of shared documents. 3. The GDrive agent keeps no local copies of docs, only urls. 4. Any deletions made >25 days ago are unrecoverable. 5. Deleted accounts have only a 5 day undelete window. When you combine these it means a document you've contributed to may quickly disappear forever as the result of mis-actions made by someone else or their employer/educational institution. You may have assumed "all changes saved to drive" meant into your account, but you'd be wrong. Similarly removal of items from trash in GMail/GPhotos is permanent. If someone maliciously gained access to your Google account (or one of your devices) they could quickly and easily purge your data. These deletions would quickly and efficiently propagate to all your devices and purge the canonical "cloud" copy.
- angry_octet 10y agoThe accidental permanent deletion can also occur very easily if you use the GDrive native windows sync tool. Basically if you don't have any offline backups it is easy to become totally screwed. 2TB drives are cheap.
- creshal 10y agoI have an upload speed of 50 kbyte/s at home. I'm not putting my 2TB NAS data into The Cloud™ (or even just my personal root server) any time soon.