5 ms·

This made me wince. I haven't backed up my mac in 10 months now simply out of laziness, it contains some sensitive client work that NDA doesn't allow me to put

This made me wince. I haven't backed up my mac in 10 months now simply out of laziness, it contains some sensitive client work that NDA doesn't allow me to put in the cloud, it's millions of dollars worth of work and contracts, if I lose it, my company loses those clients as well. And my MBP gets really hot sometimes. Expect a TIFU from me at anytime.

NikolaeVarius 7y ago
I don't understand how this incident changes anything, a million things could happen to a computer that makes it unusable.
iamnotacrook 7y ago
The contracts exist elsewhere; both parties have signed them and your legal department will have a copy. You can back things up outside of the cloud. Ditto for your work, which will be in a version control system which is backed up. If you really run the risk of losing millions of dollars you need to maybe spend a little on getting 10 replacement laptops and cloning them and burying them in the garden or something. Also, it sounds like breaching the NDA is less bad than the result of losing the data.
jasonjayr 7y ago
An external hard drive is a $100 insurance policy. Here, I'll save you some trouble: just click buy now here: https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Portable-External-Drive-WDBU6Y0040BBK-WESN/dp/B0713WPGLL https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Portable-External-Drive-WDBU...
matwood 7y ago
> laziness You mean professional negligence.
- SomeOldThrow 7y ago
  There’s no need to personally attack people, they’re an adult with contracts to handle this.
  - j-c-hewitt 7y ago
    It is, though. It takes minutes to just set a set of folders to sync and there are so many services that do this either for free up to a certain size or just cheaply. Manually backing stuff up is a chore that most people will put off, which is why most services now do it in the background.
    - SomeOldThrow 7y ago
      There is a need to personally attack people?
      - Sean1708 7y ago
        Saying that something is professional negligence is not a personal attack.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        SomeOldThrow 7y ago
        Directing that at a person is, and there seems to be no justification for the implication of moral failing.
        j-c-hewitt 7y ago
        Yes, negligence is a moral failing. Do you want a negligent doctor? Do you want a negligent lawyer? How about a negligent accountant?
        SomeOldThrow 7y ago
        We know none of this so that’s a straw man and a case of whataboutism.
        7y ago
- dang 7y ago
  Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how you feel about professionalism. The first concern of a forum like HN is not to burn itself to a crisp, and that's what flames like this ultimately do. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and following the guidelines when posting here?
basilgohar 7y ago
You can use a service like Backblaze[1] and encrypt the backups with a password. This is saving you a LOT of worry and risk for $6/month. [1]https://www.backblaze.com https://www.backblaze.com
- wDcBKgt66V8WDs 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure the recovery process for backblaze includes them decrypting your files on their infrastructure and then sending to you. Or something like that. I did a ton of research into the different options recently and didn't like backblaze because of that. However, I decided to give them a try anyway as I was partly researching for a friend who desperately needed backups and didn't care about that as much. So I installed backblaze on a machine and was surprised to find that 1) the exe is apparently modified per user so you don't have to login (memory hazy) and 2) it _immediately_ starts uploading _everything_ which really pissed me off. Like I get it, full system backups, but still I want some acknowledgement of what's about to happen and options to pare it down if I want. Nooope. So yeah I don't think Bacblaze is gonna work for GP with their NDA given they can't restore without breaking it.
  - xoa 7y ago
    I'll point out that nothing stops you, with any service at all, from encrypting yourself then backing that up. Ie., it's completely fine with Backblaze to dump everything into an encrypted sparseimage first, and then back up that rather then your drive directly. That's not to say getting a couple of simple external USB HDDs and then rotating them into a firesafe offsite once a week isn't a good idea too, or having a NAS, or any of an endless number of other solutions. But in many cases using a 3rd party cloud service has advantages, and if you take care of encrypting contents yourself so that you just plain can ignore any security or lack thereof it'll make more options available, and possibly cheaper ones. It's all just bits and bytes.
    - wDcBKgt66V8WDs 7y ago
      This is true but it adds a lot of complexity and brittleness for the average person.
nkrisc 7y ago
What, no one backed anything up before "the cloud"?
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Yes, to CDRs that turned out to self-destruct in a year or so.
ValentineC 7y ago
> I haven't backed up my mac in 10 months now simply out of laziness I've found that the backup strategy that works for me (i.e. set it and forget) is to have: 1) a daily Time Machine backup over my home wifi to my NAS; and 2) an occasional cloud backup using your preferred backup software of choice (I use Arq, but it's really slow backing up to Google Drive). This way, if my MacBook goes out of action for some reason, I can easily get a replacement with little downtime. I haven't gotten around to figuring out how to test my backups, and that's pretty important too.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

NikolaeVarius 7y ago

I don't understand how this incident changes anything, a million things could happen to a computer that makes it unusable.

iamnotacrook 7y ago

The contracts exist elsewhere; both parties have signed them and your legal department will have a copy. You can back things up outside of the cloud. Ditto for your work, which will be in a version control system which is backed up. If you really run the risk of losing millions of dollars you need to maybe spend a little on getting 10 replacement laptops and cloning them and burying them in the garden or something. Also, it sounds like breaching the NDA is less bad than the result of losing the data.

jasonjayr 7y ago

An external hard drive is a $100 insurance policy. Here, I'll save you some trouble: just click buy now here: https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Portable-External-Drive-WDBU6Y0040BBK-WESN/dp/B0713WPGLL https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Portable-External-Drive-WDBU...

matwood 7y ago

> laziness You mean professional negligence.

SomeOldThrow 7y ago
There’s no need to personally attack people, they’re an adult with contracts to handle this.
- j-c-hewitt 7y ago
  It is, though. It takes minutes to just set a set of folders to sync and there are so many services that do this either for free up to a certain size or just cheaply. Manually backing stuff up is a chore that most people will put off, which is why most services now do it in the background.
  - SomeOldThrow 7y ago
    There is a need to personally attack people?
    - Sean1708 7y ago
      Saying that something is professional negligence is not a personal attack.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - SomeOldThrow 7y ago
        Directing that at a person is, and there seems to be no justification for the implication of moral failing.
        j-c-hewitt 7y ago
        Yes, negligence is a moral failing. Do you want a negligent doctor? Do you want a negligent lawyer? How about a negligent accountant?
        SomeOldThrow 7y ago
        We know none of this so that’s a straw man and a case of whataboutism.
        7y ago
dang 7y ago
Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how you feel about professionalism. The first concern of a forum like HN is not to burn itself to a crisp, and that's what flames like this ultimately do. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and following the guidelines when posting here?

basilgohar 7y ago

You can use a service like Backblaze[1] and encrypt the backups with a password. This is saving you a LOT of worry and risk for $6/month. [1]https://www.backblaze.com https://www.backblaze.com

wDcBKgt66V8WDs 7y ago
I'm pretty sure the recovery process for backblaze includes them decrypting your files on their infrastructure and then sending to you. Or something like that. I did a ton of research into the different options recently and didn't like backblaze because of that. However, I decided to give them a try anyway as I was partly researching for a friend who desperately needed backups and didn't care about that as much. So I installed backblaze on a machine and was surprised to find that 1) the exe is apparently modified per user so you don't have to login (memory hazy) and 2) it _immediately_ starts uploading _everything_ which really pissed me off. Like I get it, full system backups, but still I want some acknowledgement of what's about to happen and options to pare it down if I want. Nooope. So yeah I don't think Bacblaze is gonna work for GP with their NDA given they can't restore without breaking it.
- xoa 7y ago
  I'll point out that nothing stops you, with any service at all, from encrypting yourself then backing that up. Ie., it's completely fine with Backblaze to dump everything into an encrypted sparseimage first, and then back up that rather then your drive directly. That's not to say getting a couple of simple external USB HDDs and then rotating them into a firesafe offsite once a week isn't a good idea too, or having a NAS, or any of an endless number of other solutions. But in many cases using a 3rd party cloud service has advantages, and if you take care of encrypting contents yourself so that you just plain can ignore any security or lack thereof it'll make more options available, and possibly cheaper ones. It's all just bits and bytes.
  - wDcBKgt66V8WDs 7y ago
    This is true but it adds a lot of complexity and brittleness for the average person.

nkrisc 7y ago

What, no one backed anything up before "the cloud"?

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Yes, to CDRs that turned out to self-destruct in a year or so.

ValentineC 7y ago

> I haven't backed up my mac in 10 months now simply out of laziness I've found that the backup strategy that works for me (i.e. set it and forget) is to have: 1) a daily Time Machine backup over my home wifi to my NAS; and 2) an occasional cloud backup using your preferred backup software of choice (I use Arq, but it's really slow backing up to Google Drive). This way, if my MacBook goes out of action for some reason, I can easily get a replacement with little downtime. I haven't gotten around to figuring out how to test my backups, and that's pretty important too.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]