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Stupid question, but would such a storm wipe my HDDs that hold all my private data? If so, what would be a safe storage with similar capacities?
by Kenji 10y ago
Stupid question, but would such a storm wipe my HDDs that hold all my private data? If so, what would be a safe storage with similar capacities?
- cletus 10y agoThis may interest you: https://superuser.com/questions/1014071/how-to-protect-my-digital-data-from-solar-flares https://superuser.com/questions/1014071/how-to-protect-my-di... Standard advice: the best thing you can do for protecting data is have an offsite backup. This could be as simple as Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, etc.
- hive_mind 10y agoWhy wouldn't the storm wipe out Dropbox / Amazon's HDDs too?
- M_Grey 10y agoIf you have that kind of concern for your data, there are solutions which involve actual nuclear bunkers... that would do the trick.
- cletus 10y agoThere are several factors: 1. Cloud storage is likely to have a more resilient backup strategy; 2. Magnetic storms tend to be localized so you want to spread geographically. So if for example you copy data to hard drives and store them at home and work you're still in danger to a localized storm; and 3. And this is the big one. A single physical location exposes you to far more likely risks than solar storms such as fire, flooding and theft.
- marcosdumay 10y agoAbout #2, solar storms are world-wide.
- M_Grey 10y agoThe upside at least there, is that there is some warning; you could stick everything you care about into a Faraday cage. Power lines... not so much.
- marcosdumay 10y agoNo need. Just unplug them from the power lines and you are good.
- Kenji 10y agoI like knowing where my backups are, physically, but thank you very much. I will back up on my own disk and store them in secure locations.
- marcosdumay 10y agoDon't count on online backups to protect you from those¹. Anything plugged into a power grid anywhere can go away. Offline backups would be safe (even from a close EMP, in HDD or SSD form). 1 - In theory you can have your power lines protected against those. But I wouldn't count on somebody's else lines being protected.
- ivanhoe 10y agoIf your HDDs (or any other equipment) are inside a metal enclosure (like a standard PC case) and you unplug all external cables from it, it will be just fine. Any kind of metal enclosure with holes smaller than the wavelength of the radiation acts like a Faraday's cage, external EM field will not be able penetrate it. Solar storm generates a low frequency (very long wavelength) electromagnetic waves, so even a steel reinforced concrete construction (or any other metal net) with a good grounding would completely stop it.
- tbrownaw 10y agowould such a storm wipe my HDDs that hold all my private data? No. If they're plugged in to the wall, they might get fried into a powdery crisp. But they wouldn't get merely erased, and if they're not connected to a wall socket they'll be completely fine.