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Describing systems in the article's terms ("5UP3R 51MPL3, BR0S") is disingenous. Backing up to multiple manually managed locations requires also maintaining th

Describing systems in the article's terms ("5UP3R 51MPL3, BR0S") is disingenous. Backing up to multiple manually managed locations requires also maintaining those locations, which means spending time on system administration, which is not negligible (it's sysadmin work). At best, the sysadmin time is amortized, but in real world, it never really is. It's difficult to compare this strategy to actual backup programs, because it's not really a backup (it misses some functionalities of backup systems). If the independence requirement is removed (which can make the comparison improper), then for 10/20$ a month there are backup programs that require no maintenance at all, adding other functionalities at the same time (which can include user-owned external storage locations).

megous 3y ago
Manage what? The OP talks about SSD USB sticks and external HDDs. You plug it in, format it, maybe enable some encryption once at the beginning, and that's it. If your data fits a single drive, there's no management to speak of. Then he mentions 2 managed online services, that he doesn't manage himself.
- michaelt 3y ago
  He mentions three cloud services, two of which (vultr.com, ZFS.rent) just provision a bare VM which he has to manage. And it's not the easy type of sysadmin work where the systems are identical - he's got a mix of Mac, Linux and BSD so 3 different init systems, 3 different disk encryption systems, and so on. And despite the fact he's paying for three different hosted off-site backups, and he's got five backups within his own home, he still feels he needs to haul an extra backup to the bank every month? This is the sysadmin equivalent of building a bunker stocked with canned food "just in case" there's a nuclear war.
  - megous 3y ago
    Yes, "bare" single-user VM with no publicly available services is something you barely have to manage if at all. It's not like it's bare metal where you have to deal with it failing. 4 rented/hosted offsite backups seems overkill. But I can understand that the number of on-site backups doesn't really matter for the safety, because there are several event types that can destroy them all at once. 1 owned backup device in a different location seems perfectly reasonable. Hosted stuff can easily go away if you stop being able to pay for it or lose access, for any reason. Anyway, of course some "I trust backblaze with everything, incl. quality of their backup software" setup, will be much less complicated and will require much less knowledge.

megous 3y ago

Manage what? The OP talks about SSD USB sticks and external HDDs. You plug it in, format it, maybe enable some encryption once at the beginning, and that's it. If your data fits a single drive, there's no management to speak of. Then he mentions 2 managed online services, that he doesn't manage himself.

michaelt 3y ago
He mentions three cloud services, two of which (vultr.com, ZFS.rent) just provision a bare VM which he has to manage. And it's not the easy type of sysadmin work where the systems are identical - he's got a mix of Mac, Linux and BSD so 3 different init systems, 3 different disk encryption systems, and so on. And despite the fact he's paying for three different hosted off-site backups, and he's got five backups within his own home, he still feels he needs to haul an extra backup to the bank every month? This is the sysadmin equivalent of building a bunker stocked with canned food "just in case" there's a nuclear war.
- megous 3y ago
  Yes, "bare" single-user VM with no publicly available services is something you barely have to manage if at all. It's not like it's bare metal where you have to deal with it failing. 4 rented/hosted offsite backups seems overkill. But I can understand that the number of on-site backups doesn't really matter for the safety, because there are several event types that can destroy them all at once. 1 owned backup device in a different location seems perfectly reasonable. Hosted stuff can easily go away if you stop being able to pay for it or lose access, for any reason. Anyway, of course some "I trust backblaze with everything, incl. quality of their backup software" setup, will be much less complicated and will require much less knowledge.