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> Is this something researchers using Google Drive should be aware of? This is something EVERYONE using Google Drive should be aware of. Your data on Google Dr

by bedast 4y ago

> Is this something researchers using Google Drive should be aware of? This is something EVERYONE using Google Drive should be aware of. Your data on Google Drive is scanned by Google (and not only for policy violations), meaning it is not secured FROM Google, and false positives can and will cause your data to be lost and cause your account to be flagged. Using Google Sheets means that is your only copy of the data, so you also have no backup. Google does not provide support for this service.

silicon2401 4y ago
This is why I use local storage as my backup methods. Just upgraded my total storage capacity to 28TB with 3 copies. I may add cloud backups once I figure out how to make sure my uploads are encrypted, but owning your own storage is the only surefire way to make sure nobody else can play games with your data
- Entinel 4y ago
  This isn't necessarily aimed at you but a bit of a rant because honestly I feel like encrypted backups for personal use are evangelized to the point that it's ridiculous. If my entire hard drive was dumped on the internet, there is nothing that would happen. That isn't to say people should use them but people should consider their threat model.
  - silicon2401 4y ago
    I don't have a problem with you saying they're ridiculous; I'm sure a lot of things are over-evangelized. I have no emotional attachment to anything except my data. However I am very private so I simply feel more comfortable having my data encrypted in the cloud and ideally encrypted on my HDDs. The former for backup privacy, the latter for privacy if I need to RMA an HDD one day.
  - jobs_throwaway 4y ago
    > If my entire hard drive was dumped on the internet, there is nothing that would happen. What do you mean by this? There's nothing personally compromising on your hard drive?
    - Entinel 4y ago
      No, I'm old school. Anything personal gets downloaded, printed, then deleted.
  - bedast 4y ago
    I prefer to encrypt my backup before sending it somewhere I don't control. Having an offsite backup implies not having control over it. "The Cloud" is just someone else's computer, and they can do with it what they want. It's not just about protecting the data from being leaked/stolen, but also to protect it from being tampered with, such as injecting unlawful material, malicious software, etc.
- giobox 4y ago
  3 copies is great, but is one of them offsite? Without an offsite location I can't consider my personal data safe, and offsite is generally harder if you are buying your own disks/using local storage. If all three copies are in your house, you are still vulnerable to thefts/acts of god etc, regardless of who owns the disk the data is sitting on. Personally I think local storage is a bit of a losing battle for long term personal backups; the running costs of expanding and replacing disks at 28tb size start to get significant if you do it properly with offsite compared to the range of affordable encrypted cloud backup services out there, many of which let you provide your own private key for storing the data encrypted at rest on their side (how I use backblaze right now for all my machines). I'm honestly not sure I could do local storage well at less than the $65 per computer per year I pay Backblaze - one new drive a year for a NAS is already more than I pay Backblaze annually before other costs and my time to maintain are factored. While I'm not accusing you of this, my experience is many people running their own NAS do so because they enjoy running their own NAS if they are totally honest with themselves, not because its necessarily the best or most convenient option.
  - silicon2401 4y ago
    I do keep one copy offsite. However, I'm not against cloud backups, I just prioritized setting up my local setup first so that I'm not dependent on the cloud. If I have 2 HDDs + backblaze and one HDD dies, it would be a pain to download 10TB of data from backblaze to set up the replacement HDD. I totally understand your point about running a NAS and I've actively tried to avoid setting one up. My storage system is entirely external HDDs. I want to expand to a NAS in the future but that'll be for fun, not backup (at least until I can afford 3 separate NAS instances for backup). That being said, do you have any advice on how to encrypt data before uploading to cloud? I'm not at that stage yet so I haven't done deep research, but I've heard of things like veracrypt/truecrypt? And I've heard enough good things about backblaze (and enough bad things about other companies like google) that I'd be comfortable going with them if the price is in my budget and if I can just figure out the encryption angle.
    - giobox 4y ago
      With backblaze its as simple as typing your own private key in a box on the app preferences page, assuming you trust backblaze etc- that's all thats required to encrypt your backups such that backblaze cant decrypt them server side. The caveat is of course if you lose that key, you lose access to your backups and there is nothing Backblaze can do to help. > https://www.backblaze.com/backup-encryption.html https://www.backblaze.com/backup-encryption.html - scroll to "Adding your own passphrase"
- rsync 4y ago
  You should consider the ‘borg’ tool for encrypted backups. Just google: Both holy grail backups … for stavros’ nice write up.
- bedast 4y ago
  Following 3-2-1 backups is definitely recommended, and if you have a good NAS setup, it can be pretty easy, even with encrypted backups. My NAS runs TrueNAS Scale. Any data I need to keep around long term goes into a personal share. I have restic installed on the NAS, with a USB drive hosting the repository for it connected to the NAS. At this point, copy may or may not exist on my personal computer, does exist in the personal share, and is copied to an encrypted backup repo locally. Finally, there's a sync job pushing the encrypted restic repo to Wasabi. I only follow 3-2-1 on things that need it, so things like my media library aren't part of it (I can just rebuild this stuff). At less than 1 TB, Wasabi can be pretty cheap. In terms of documents, though, I tend to use tools like LibreOffice rather than cloud office tools. Having real documents that I can include in my 3-2-1 backups, as well as being able to share, is convenient and useful. Maybe not the best for collaboration, but that's easily worked around. I still work with cloud office documents from time to time, as documents shared to me, not vice versa. If it's something important that I need to keep a copy of, I export it.
- lenkite 4y ago
  What apps do you use on desktop and mobile to keep everything nice and up2date ?

by bedast 4y ago

silicon2401 4y ago

This is why I use local storage as my backup methods. Just upgraded my total storage capacity to 28TB with 3 copies. I may add cloud backups once I figure out how to make sure my uploads are encrypted, but owning your own storage is the only surefire way to make sure nobody else can play games with your data

Entinel 4y ago
This isn't necessarily aimed at you but a bit of a rant because honestly I feel like encrypted backups for personal use are evangelized to the point that it's ridiculous. If my entire hard drive was dumped on the internet, there is nothing that would happen. That isn't to say people should use them but people should consider their threat model.
- silicon2401 4y ago
  I don't have a problem with you saying they're ridiculous; I'm sure a lot of things are over-evangelized. I have no emotional attachment to anything except my data. However I am very private so I simply feel more comfortable having my data encrypted in the cloud and ideally encrypted on my HDDs. The former for backup privacy, the latter for privacy if I need to RMA an HDD one day.
- jobs_throwaway 4y ago
  > If my entire hard drive was dumped on the internet, there is nothing that would happen. What do you mean by this? There's nothing personally compromising on your hard drive?
  - Entinel 4y ago
    No, I'm old school. Anything personal gets downloaded, printed, then deleted.
- bedast 4y ago
  I prefer to encrypt my backup before sending it somewhere I don't control. Having an offsite backup implies not having control over it. "The Cloud" is just someone else's computer, and they can do with it what they want. It's not just about protecting the data from being leaked/stolen, but also to protect it from being tampered with, such as injecting unlawful material, malicious software, etc.
giobox 4y ago
3 copies is great, but is one of them offsite? Without an offsite location I can't consider my personal data safe, and offsite is generally harder if you are buying your own disks/using local storage. If all three copies are in your house, you are still vulnerable to thefts/acts of god etc, regardless of who owns the disk the data is sitting on. Personally I think local storage is a bit of a losing battle for long term personal backups; the running costs of expanding and replacing disks at 28tb size start to get significant if you do it properly with offsite compared to the range of affordable encrypted cloud backup services out there, many of which let you provide your own private key for storing the data encrypted at rest on their side (how I use backblaze right now for all my machines). I'm honestly not sure I could do local storage well at less than the $65 per computer per year I pay Backblaze - one new drive a year for a NAS is already more than I pay Backblaze annually before other costs and my time to maintain are factored. While I'm not accusing you of this, my experience is many people running their own NAS do so because they enjoy running their own NAS if they are totally honest with themselves, not because its necessarily the best or most convenient option.
- silicon2401 4y ago
  I do keep one copy offsite. However, I'm not against cloud backups, I just prioritized setting up my local setup first so that I'm not dependent on the cloud. If I have 2 HDDs + backblaze and one HDD dies, it would be a pain to download 10TB of data from backblaze to set up the replacement HDD. I totally understand your point about running a NAS and I've actively tried to avoid setting one up. My storage system is entirely external HDDs. I want to expand to a NAS in the future but that'll be for fun, not backup (at least until I can afford 3 separate NAS instances for backup). That being said, do you have any advice on how to encrypt data before uploading to cloud? I'm not at that stage yet so I haven't done deep research, but I've heard of things like veracrypt/truecrypt? And I've heard enough good things about backblaze (and enough bad things about other companies like google) that I'd be comfortable going with them if the price is in my budget and if I can just figure out the encryption angle.
  - giobox 4y ago
    With backblaze its as simple as typing your own private key in a box on the app preferences page, assuming you trust backblaze etc- that's all thats required to encrypt your backups such that backblaze cant decrypt them server side. The caveat is of course if you lose that key, you lose access to your backups and there is nothing Backblaze can do to help. > https://www.backblaze.com/backup-encryption.html https://www.backblaze.com/backup-encryption.html - scroll to "Adding your own passphrase"
rsync 4y ago
You should consider the ‘borg’ tool for encrypted backups. Just google: Both holy grail backups … for stavros’ nice write up.
bedast 4y ago
Following 3-2-1 backups is definitely recommended, and if you have a good NAS setup, it can be pretty easy, even with encrypted backups. My NAS runs TrueNAS Scale. Any data I need to keep around long term goes into a personal share. I have restic installed on the NAS, with a USB drive hosting the repository for it connected to the NAS. At this point, copy may or may not exist on my personal computer, does exist in the personal share, and is copied to an encrypted backup repo locally. Finally, there's a sync job pushing the encrypted restic repo to Wasabi. I only follow 3-2-1 on things that need it, so things like my media library aren't part of it (I can just rebuild this stuff). At less than 1 TB, Wasabi can be pretty cheap. In terms of documents, though, I tend to use tools like LibreOffice rather than cloud office tools. Having real documents that I can include in my 3-2-1 backups, as well as being able to share, is convenient and useful. Maybe not the best for collaboration, but that's easily worked around. I still work with cloud office documents from time to time, as documents shared to me, not vice versa. If it's something important that I need to keep a copy of, I export it.
lenkite 4y ago
What apps do you use on desktop and mobile to keep everything nice and up2date ?