4 ms·

This is usually a difficult problem. Then I divided everything I have data-wise into two buckets: stuff I can't afford to lose, stuff I can. It's now simple. Al

by setq 10y ago

This is usually a difficult problem. Then I divided everything I have data-wise into two buckets: stuff I can't afford to lose, stuff I can. It's now simple. Also I mandate that 'everything is a file'. Turns out the former is only around 22Gb of mainly code, documents, videos and photos. The latter is 250Gb of music, films etc. The latter goes on a NAS with a mirror on the laptop. The important stuff lives on the laptop protected by bitlocker, an encrypted USB stick protected by bitlocker that is on me 24/7, the NAS and another offline unencrypted USB stick that I drop off at my parents' and cycle every six months. All disks are replaced every three years. All USB sticks once a year. All file transfers are done with Beyond Compare by hand and verified after.

croon 10y ago
> It's now simple. ~> A handful of manual steps you need to remember to do. The only offsite you have is at your parents, and is only "uploaded" every 6 months. Isn't it just better and easier (at least long term) to just use duplicity (or equivalent) and sync your NAS to any backend (Drive/Onedrive/Dropbox/Hubic/etc)? And then just use your NAS as your "true" storage? Then it'll just run until your configuration changes (NAS switch, service discontinued, etc) at which point you reconfigure it once.
- setq 10y ago
  Yes that 6 months window I decided is ok for me. It might not be for you. If my house burns down, my car burns down and I end up in hospital, losing 6 months of data potentially isn't a major issue. If you make it a conscious scheduled process you know it's working. I'm a relative expert with duplicity (I run a whole pile of stuff in AWS that uses the S3 back end for backups) and it's not a solution I really entirely trust. First you incur the wrath of configuration i.e. the initial ramp up to get it working, then there's the monitoring overhead which isn't trivial as it isn't the quietest bit of software known to man, and finally we have the complexity perspective which introduces a lot more code, network transport etc. Plus it is horribly buggy, particularly with incrementals, metadata and corruption. The same is true with Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox which I have used. Edit: comedic timing perhaps, but since I wrote this post I've just got a duplicity failure to deal with...
- jrnichols 10y ago
  This is why I went with CrashPlan. Backing stuff up to a friend's computer? Free and only limited by their storage. or.. put a box at your friends house with as much storage as you want. Back when I had FIOS (and it was fast & reliable) this is what I did. Put a NUC with a friend, had an external drive, we were each others offsite backup location. Quite handy.
ocdtrekkie 10y ago
Every six months is a very painful potential loss window. There are great sync tools that can work point-to-point over the Internet. The cost of having a NAS at home and a NAS at your parents, and then syncing between them is totally worth it.
- pnutjam 10y ago
  crashplan has a client that handles this, it's free for this sort of usage, you only pay if you use their cloud service.

by setq 10y ago

croon 10y ago

> It's now simple. ~> A handful of manual steps you need to remember to do. The only offsite you have is at your parents, and is only "uploaded" every 6 months. Isn't it just better and easier (at least long term) to just use duplicity (or equivalent) and sync your NAS to any backend (Drive/Onedrive/Dropbox/Hubic/etc)? And then just use your NAS as your "true" storage? Then it'll just run until your configuration changes (NAS switch, service discontinued, etc) at which point you reconfigure it once.

setq 10y ago
Yes that 6 months window I decided is ok for me. It might not be for you. If my house burns down, my car burns down and I end up in hospital, losing 6 months of data potentially isn't a major issue. If you make it a conscious scheduled process you know it's working. I'm a relative expert with duplicity (I run a whole pile of stuff in AWS that uses the S3 back end for backups) and it's not a solution I really entirely trust. First you incur the wrath of configuration i.e. the initial ramp up to get it working, then there's the monitoring overhead which isn't trivial as it isn't the quietest bit of software known to man, and finally we have the complexity perspective which introduces a lot more code, network transport etc. Plus it is horribly buggy, particularly with incrementals, metadata and corruption. The same is true with Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox which I have used. Edit: comedic timing perhaps, but since I wrote this post I've just got a duplicity failure to deal with...
jrnichols 10y ago
This is why I went with CrashPlan. Backing stuff up to a friend's computer? Free and only limited by their storage. or.. put a box at your friends house with as much storage as you want. Back when I had FIOS (and it was fast & reliable) this is what I did. Put a NUC with a friend, had an external drive, we were each others offsite backup location. Quite handy.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago

Every six months is a very painful potential loss window. There are great sync tools that can work point-to-point over the Internet. The cost of having a NAS at home and a NAS at your parents, and then syncing between them is totally worth it.

pnutjam 10y ago
crashplan has a client that handles this, it's free for this sort of usage, you only pay if you use their cloud service.