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Thoughts on using S3 for personal backups? (Worried about a physical hard drive getting lost or damaged...)

jklhkhjl 6y ago
S3 is subject to all the same bullshit. If you want to use S3, use S3... but you should still use that local drive as well.
- bitexploder 6y ago
  At least you can find someone for support at Amazon.
edsouza 6y ago
Suggest you research cloud backup solutions. Myself I pay for Backblaze's Personal backup solution. There also is Backblaze's B2 Cloud Storage (free 10GB tier) if you want something similar to S3.
- nerdponx 6y ago
  Frustratingly, the Backblaze personal backup client doesn't support Linux, because they don't want people to abuse the personal backup service for their server, NAS, etc.
- progman32 6y ago
  Assuming you have a local backup too, rsync.net is an interesting option. It even supports ZFS snapshots natively if you're using a NAS. In case of ransomware it's useful to have access to older snapshots. Myself, I keep everything on my cheap surplus NAS (2 drive redundancy), snapshot regularly, and occasionally sync to an airgapped drive the next town over. I keep a cold copy at my parents house, but that's last-resort. The important bit is that I've successfully trialed recovering from a total loss of my NAS and house, in case that ever actually happens :)
walrus01 6y ago
buy two physical 12TB USB3.0 HDDs or similar and periodically rotate them through storage at a trusted family member's house off-site
- progman32 6y ago
  A good third option is at the office (remember those?). Tends to be a little more secure than a residential building. Before the human malware I'd bring home the disk stashed in my desk drawer on Thursday, sync the data at home, then re-stash the drive on Friday morning. Good-enough solution for my comically slow upstream bandwidth at home.
ericbarrett 6y ago
I use it, it's fine as a "third place." Make sure you set the tier of the storage as the default Standard is fairly pricey. I use Standard-IA (Infrequently Accessed), which is still hot-readable but with a high retrieval charge—perfect for what should normally be write-only. A bucket policy ages out backups > 1 year. Encrypt your backups before you write them, of course. There's nothing wrong with Backblaze et al. either. They may give much lower costs for bulk data. I only back up a few dozen GB so it's not worth opening another vendor relationship for me. Somebody else suggested "hard drives at a relative's house." What's more likely, you lose S3 access—or your relative's house burns down / floods / is robbed / their kid yoinks a drive to use at school / any number of other disasters? Also, a backup should be as easy to do as possible—having to manually shuttle a drive back and forth from a remote location is probably not the best, unless you are extremely disciplined.
srockets 6y ago
The only answer for backups is Tarsnap.
- rattray 6y ago
  Do they still delete your data if there's a billing issue?

S3 is subject to all the same bullshit. If you want to use S3, use S3... but you should still use that local drive as well.

bitexploder 6y ago
At least you can find someone for support at Amazon.

edsouza 6y ago

Suggest you research cloud backup solutions. Myself I pay for Backblaze's Personal backup solution. There also is Backblaze's B2 Cloud Storage (free 10GB tier) if you want something similar to S3.

nerdponx 6y ago
Frustratingly, the Backblaze personal backup client doesn't support Linux, because they don't want people to abuse the personal backup service for their server, NAS, etc.
progman32 6y ago
Assuming you have a local backup too, rsync.net is an interesting option. It even supports ZFS snapshots natively if you're using a NAS. In case of ransomware it's useful to have access to older snapshots. Myself, I keep everything on my cheap surplus NAS (2 drive redundancy), snapshot regularly, and occasionally sync to an airgapped drive the next town over. I keep a cold copy at my parents house, but that's last-resort. The important bit is that I've successfully trialed recovering from a total loss of my NAS and house, in case that ever actually happens :)

walrus01 6y ago

buy two physical 12TB USB3.0 HDDs or similar and periodically rotate them through storage at a trusted family member's house off-site

progman32 6y ago
A good third option is at the office (remember those?). Tends to be a little more secure than a residential building. Before the human malware I'd bring home the disk stashed in my desk drawer on Thursday, sync the data at home, then re-stash the drive on Friday morning. Good-enough solution for my comically slow upstream bandwidth at home.

ericbarrett 6y ago

I use it, it's fine as a "third place." Make sure you set the tier of the storage as the default Standard is fairly pricey. I use Standard-IA (Infrequently Accessed), which is still hot-readable but with a high retrieval charge—perfect for what should normally be write-only. A bucket policy ages out backups > 1 year. Encrypt your backups before you write them, of course. There's nothing wrong with Backblaze et al. either. They may give much lower costs for bulk data. I only back up a few dozen GB so it's not worth opening another vendor relationship for me. Somebody else suggested "hard drives at a relative's house." What's more likely, you lose S3 access—or your relative's house burns down / floods / is robbed / their kid yoinks a drive to use at school / any number of other disasters? Also, a backup should be as easy to do as possible—having to manually shuttle a drive back and forth from a remote location is probably not the best, unless you are extremely disciplined.

srockets 6y ago

The only answer for backups is Tarsnap.

rattray 6y ago
Do they still delete your data if there's a billing issue?