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It is smug because the average person is not a geek running a micro rack in their basement (nor does the average person possess the time, means or expertise to

It is smug because the average person is not a geek running a micro rack in their basement (nor does the average person possess the time, means or expertise to spin up and maintain all such should they even want to). It is smug because, to GP's point, a dismissal of a very real problem with hyper-consolidated markets that allow the most powerful entities on earth to abdicate their responsibility, and foist it upon the people least equipped to handle it, all in the name of "personal responsibility".

layer8 1y ago
The mistake of the OP was to not buy the new drive right away and copy his data locally. No basement rack needed, just a USB hard drive. They wrote about owning multiple drives and having collected data over the course of 30 years, so they weren’t completely nontechnical either.
anonzzzies 1y ago
Aren't the govs that are voting in all over the place on right wing side all for 'personal responsibility' and no gov coddling? But sure, I am absolutely for rules for these companies, having a number to call with a human etc and not actually bring allowed to not offer that because the service is free or cheap and the company very large so no one thinks it will matter. Drives are very cheap these days and it seems he had most of it local but went full cloud.
- Vaslo 1y ago
  Amazing you bring politics into it. I’m glad the GOP and Trump live rent free in your head so it extends to everything you do.
ToucanLoucan 1y ago
So I definitely agree about being smug. This isn't funny and you can approach this with empathy and understanding for how soul-crushing this is for this person. And also, you do not need a rack of homelab gear to do backups. I have an AV rack (somewhat undermining my point I accept), 16U, bolted to my laundry wall. Within it is a network switch, my ISP's routing gear, my Phillips hue controller, and 3 PCs. One is a dedicated Minecraft box (shut up), one is my universal Ubuntu box for miscellaneous automations + plex, and one is a Windows 10 box that handles my DVR, file shares, and backups. The actual backups themselves are scripts that run nightly and move data from the misc. PCs to the big one, along with some syncthing shares that do the same, and then the lot is backed up offsite with a backup vendor's application. I grant if you were setting this entire setup up from nothing, it would be a decent amount of work. However I also point out, this is all off the shelf batch files and OSS. This is hardly what I would call engineering, and that's by design, I wanted it to very simple. So, big empathy, big understanding, I would give this dude a hug if I could. AND, people should take this as a lesson to not just shove all their shit into a monolith and call it a day because it's cheap and easy.
oskarkk 1y ago
You don't have to be a geek, you don't need a rack, you don't need much time to do this. Just buy some external drive and copy at least something there. We're talking about "30 years of irreplaceable photos and work". Doing a backup one time a year would save 90%+ of that data in case of problems, without any need for technical knowledge or dedicating significant time to this. I agree that the companies should not be allowed to just lock you out of your data like that, but even if there was a strongly enforced law mandating companies to not do this, you still should have some backup. Many things could happen, and doing a simple backup is a very small investment which can save you from losing 30 years of data (even if the risk is very small).
- karencarits 1y ago
  Getting backups right _is_ difficult and can easily be quite stressful. Yes, having some external drives here and there with files would of course be helpful. But then, should you encrypt them in case of theft? Where to keep them in case of fire? What to do with "old" backups (can I trust the drive to live more than 2 years? 5 years?), copy them over to new drives? But what then with duplicated files? I think having backups in the cloud is currently the best "backup and forget" strategy
  - oskarkk 1y ago
    > Getting backups right _is_ difficult and can easily be quite stressful. My point was that something is much better than nothing, and you don't need 99.999% reliability in your setup to greatly reduce risk that you're exposing yourself to when keeping 30 years of data in only one place. > But then, should you encrypt them in case of theft? Depends on the nature of the data. I guess that most of that 30 years worth of data didn't need encryption, and copying only insensitive data is an option. On the other side, cloud account, or device logged in to the cloud account could be stolen too. > Where to keep them in case of fire? That's irrelevant if we're talking about backing up data stored on cloud service. > What to do with "old" backups (can I trust the drive to live more than 2 years? 5 years?), copy them over to new drives? But what then with duplicated files? Aside from some unlikely issues, yes, drives should last at least a couple of years. In the 5+ year timeframes I think you could just buy a new drive (bigger/cheaper/more reliable than the last as the technology improves). If we're talking about a lazy strategy of backing up the data once a year, even deleting everything on a drive and copying everything again isn't that bad. Better than nothing. > I think having backups in the cloud is currently the best "backup and forget" strategy But we're not talking about having the cloud as a backup. The issue here is having the files only in the cloud, with no backup. For a non-technical person, cloud as a backup is great, but here we have a case where a person had all their data only on the cloud, and then lost access to the cloud. If the cloud was only a backup (or a way to sync/access the data on other devices), but the data would still be present on some private device, there would be no problem.

layer8 1y ago

The mistake of the OP was to not buy the new drive right away and copy his data locally. No basement rack needed, just a USB hard drive. They wrote about owning multiple drives and having collected data over the course of 30 years, so they weren’t completely nontechnical either.

anonzzzies 1y ago

Aren't the govs that are voting in all over the place on right wing side all for 'personal responsibility' and no gov coddling? But sure, I am absolutely for rules for these companies, having a number to call with a human etc and not actually bring allowed to not offer that because the service is free or cheap and the company very large so no one thinks it will matter. Drives are very cheap these days and it seems he had most of it local but went full cloud.

Vaslo 1y ago
Amazing you bring politics into it. I’m glad the GOP and Trump live rent free in your head so it extends to everything you do.

ToucanLoucan 1y ago

So I definitely agree about being smug. This isn't funny and you can approach this with empathy and understanding for how soul-crushing this is for this person. And also, you do not need a rack of homelab gear to do backups. I have an AV rack (somewhat undermining my point I accept), 16U, bolted to my laundry wall. Within it is a network switch, my ISP's routing gear, my Phillips hue controller, and 3 PCs. One is a dedicated Minecraft box (shut up), one is my universal Ubuntu box for miscellaneous automations + plex, and one is a Windows 10 box that handles my DVR, file shares, and backups. The actual backups themselves are scripts that run nightly and move data from the misc. PCs to the big one, along with some syncthing shares that do the same, and then the lot is backed up offsite with a backup vendor's application. I grant if you were setting this entire setup up from nothing, it would be a decent amount of work. However I also point out, this is all off the shelf batch files and OSS. This is hardly what I would call engineering, and that's by design, I wanted it to very simple. So, big empathy, big understanding, I would give this dude a hug if I could. AND, people should take this as a lesson to not just shove all their shit into a monolith and call it a day because it's cheap and easy.

oskarkk 1y ago

You don't have to be a geek, you don't need a rack, you don't need much time to do this. Just buy some external drive and copy at least something there. We're talking about "30 years of irreplaceable photos and work". Doing a backup one time a year would save 90%+ of that data in case of problems, without any need for technical knowledge or dedicating significant time to this. I agree that the companies should not be allowed to just lock you out of your data like that, but even if there was a strongly enforced law mandating companies to not do this, you still should have some backup. Many things could happen, and doing a simple backup is a very small investment which can save you from losing 30 years of data (even if the risk is very small).

karencarits 1y ago
Getting backups right _is_ difficult and can easily be quite stressful. Yes, having some external drives here and there with files would of course be helpful. But then, should you encrypt them in case of theft? Where to keep them in case of fire? What to do with "old" backups (can I trust the drive to live more than 2 years? 5 years?), copy them over to new drives? But what then with duplicated files? I think having backups in the cloud is currently the best "backup and forget" strategy
- oskarkk 1y ago
  > Getting backups right _is_ difficult and can easily be quite stressful. My point was that something is much better than nothing, and you don't need 99.999% reliability in your setup to greatly reduce risk that you're exposing yourself to when keeping 30 years of data in only one place. > But then, should you encrypt them in case of theft? Depends on the nature of the data. I guess that most of that 30 years worth of data didn't need encryption, and copying only insensitive data is an option. On the other side, cloud account, or device logged in to the cloud account could be stolen too. > Where to keep them in case of fire? That's irrelevant if we're talking about backing up data stored on cloud service. > What to do with "old" backups (can I trust the drive to live more than 2 years? 5 years?), copy them over to new drives? But what then with duplicated files? Aside from some unlikely issues, yes, drives should last at least a couple of years. In the 5+ year timeframes I think you could just buy a new drive (bigger/cheaper/more reliable than the last as the technology improves). If we're talking about a lazy strategy of backing up the data once a year, even deleting everything on a drive and copying everything again isn't that bad. Better than nothing. > I think having backups in the cloud is currently the best "backup and forget" strategy But we're not talking about having the cloud as a backup. The issue here is having the files only in the cloud, with no backup. For a non-technical person, cloud as a backup is great, but here we have a case where a person had all their data only on the cloud, and then lost access to the cloud. If the cloud was only a backup (or a way to sync/access the data on other devices), but the data would still be present on some private device, there would be no problem.