Backing up your back ups?
Discussion
Like many people my files and photos are mainly now on the cloud, which has heaps of advantages, and in general works very well.
However, as much as I do generally trust Google and their data storage, I am very aware if it all went to s
t I do not have a copy anywhere of some items.
What do other people have? Is there a default preference, or is it just personal preference. I have plenty of space on my desktop PC, and the chances of something affecting the desktop in my house and Google's servers at the same time are pretty low, so presumably that would be best?
However, as much as I do generally trust Google and their data storage, I am very aware if it all went to s
t I do not have a copy anywhere of some items. What do other people have? Is there a default preference, or is it just personal preference. I have plenty of space on my desktop PC, and the chances of something affecting the desktop in my house and Google's servers at the same time are pretty low, so presumably that would be best?
This is a personal thing really. My strategy is:
Photos to OneDrive and Google Photos
iPhone to iCloud backup and iTunes to the PC
Files including all of my OneDrive using Windows backup to an external usb hard drive.
Most critical files also go to Azure backup once a week and only I have the encryption key (a copy of which is held at another house 20 miles away). It costs about £4 a month which is nothing for the peace of mind it brings.
I figure that way if any of my devices fail it is backed up locally and another offsite. Backups are offline/version controlled so protected from ransomware. The most important stuff is offsite so I’m covered even if the house is destroyed.
Photos to OneDrive and Google Photos
iPhone to iCloud backup and iTunes to the PC
Files including all of my OneDrive using Windows backup to an external usb hard drive.
Most critical files also go to Azure backup once a week and only I have the encryption key (a copy of which is held at another house 20 miles away). It costs about £4 a month which is nothing for the peace of mind it brings.
I figure that way if any of my devices fail it is backed up locally and another offsite. Backups are offline/version controlled so protected from ransomware. The most important stuff is offsite so I’m covered even if the house is destroyed.
I use a simple 6TB external Western Digital Hard disc in the house with backup software to back up my PC. and then an account with Backblaze to send a copy to the cloud. If the house burns down I’m covered, if the PC blows up I’ve got a local copy.
Backblaze is about £5 a month for unlimited storage.
Backblaze is about £5 a month for unlimited storage.
I use my nas box backed up to one drive which has all my photos and I cloud plus an encrypted hard drive in my shed in a rusty box but then In a moisture free box so if the house got robbed / set on fire I have it backed up there including my files.
Also anything paper based I get through the post get scanned and uploaded to those places too! Maybe I've gone a bit ott when I type it out.
Also anything paper based I get through the post get scanned and uploaded to those places too! Maybe I've gone a bit ott when I type it out.
I use cloud as backup.
Wife's iMac and my MBP both use a Synology NAS for data storage, so RAID protection is there as the first protection.
The NAS backs up to a second NAS (just single disc for backup)
The second NAS also backs up important folders to google drive.
I also use iCloud storage for stuff I'm actively working on. This means I have secure storage for data when I'm travelling, which is most of the time.
Wife's iMac and my MBP both use a Synology NAS for data storage, so RAID protection is there as the first protection.
The NAS backs up to a second NAS (just single disc for backup)
The second NAS also backs up important folders to google drive.
I also use iCloud storage for stuff I'm actively working on. This means I have secure storage for data when I'm travelling, which is most of the time.
Condi said:
Like many people my files and photos are mainly now on the cloud, which has heaps of advantages, and in general works very well.
However, as much as I do generally trust Google and their data storage, I am very aware if it all went to st I do not have a copy anywhere of some items.
What do other people have? Is there a default preference, or is it just personal preference. I have plenty of space on my desktop PC, and the chances of something affecting the desktop in my house and Google's servers at the same time are pretty low, so presumably that would be best?
What you've done there should be called Archiving, rather than backing up. In summary - backup = you have two copies, one on your device and a backup on another. Archiving = you move the only copy you have from one device to another, eg. the cloud, thus giving you more space on your device.However, as much as I do generally trust Google and their data storage, I am very aware if it all went to s
t I do not have a copy anywhere of some items. What do other people have? Is there a default preference, or is it just personal preference. I have plenty of space on my desktop PC, and the chances of something affecting the desktop in my house and Google's servers at the same time are pretty low, so presumably that would be best?
It's this later, arching people often confuse and is great if you were running out of space on your device, but doesn't matter where you're putting it, a local device, an external harddrive or the cloud, you have one and only one copy and if that dies, you've lost everything.
Archiving != Backup... and doesn't provide any extra resilience at all.
I use Google Photos for pic backup but I still won't put personal or sensitive documents into public cloud at all.
I have a copy of my main PC on my local NAS and an external USB drive which gets unplugged once sync'd. Without an offsite copy it wouldn't protect me against something like fire at home but there we go.
I have a copy of my main PC on my local NAS and an external USB drive which gets unplugged once sync'd. Without an offsite copy it wouldn't protect me against something like fire at home but there we go.
The first question to ask is why are the files important to you?
A wedding photographer who relies on the files for the next few months to generate income is very different from a new parent wanting to preserve pictures of their children for 50+ years.
The first scenario has a large turnover of large files at their highest quality.
The second scenario has a slow but continuous increase in storage where the highest quality isn't as important.
A wedding photographer who relies on the files for the next few months to generate income is very different from a new parent wanting to preserve pictures of their children for 50+ years.
The first scenario has a large turnover of large files at their highest quality.
The second scenario has a slow but continuous increase in storage where the highest quality isn't as important.
The 3-2-1 rule is a good approach to backups:
- Keep at least three copies of your data
- Store two backup copies on different devices or storage media
- Keep at least one backup copy offsite
- cloud sync software is not backup (if you accidentally delete a file that's synced to Google Drive, Drive removes it from your other devices and then deletes it permanently after 30 days)
- RAID is also not a backup. It protects against one kind of hardware failure (HDD failure) but does nothing to protect from RAID array failure, accidental deletion, ransomware, viruses, etc.
For what it is worth to you OP, here's what I have in place (and yes, it will seem crazy overkill)
Primary backups (per Macbook) are done using timemachine, to locally attached portable drives - I have moved away from spinny disks and have portable flash drives now (initially expensive, but worth it for the speed).
For our main business Macbooks, we have a rotation policy (mine weekly, hers fortnightly) - with the active timemachine backup disc plugged into machine, the other held in our firesafe. Being OCD about this, we have set up diary reminders to prompt to swap devices over.
When they get full, they are replace with new ones, and the old ones are kept offsite (for now at least). I tend not to let timemachine do its thing of deleting old backups to make space for the new, so keep an eye on available space on each backup drive.
For the Dell laptops we have, i use Acronis Trueimage (other backup software tools are available). Similar policy in rotating backup drives so that there is always one held in firesafe).
We also have a synology NAS as the home share/media server - we will weekly send a timemachine backup to this (i've scripted this on the macs, but have to remember to do this manually for the Dells).
The synology is running raid mirroring so allows for one drive to fail and still be recoverable.
We also have a USB backup drive plugged into the NAS that receives an incremental backup nightly from the NAS (again scripted). I have 3 of these in rotation, one plugged in, one in the firesafe, and one kept offsite. I have scripted so that it sends me an email weekly to remind me to swap the drives over
Due to the volume of stuff we now seem to generate, we now tend to keep only 12-18 months worth of data on the NAS. And the older stuff is archived off to slower storage and kept in the firesafe, or offsite (when the safe looks to be getting too full).
To most people this is probably overkill. But in my early days as an independent, i had a laptop HDD fail and despite some (expensive) attempts at data recovery, i lost a significant chunk of client development work that i then had to redo at my own expense. I vowed then that i'd never get caught out like that again. It also means i can, if asked, be able to recover a file (code, script, photo, document scan, whatever) going back over a significant period of time.
We periodically test the recovery process - usually this is prompted when one of the Macbooks decides randomly to die during a software update.
The firesafe was a huge investment (at the time), but would probably be the only thing recoverable should the worst happen to the house - it is also guaranteed against flooding - as someone who has witnessed the aftermath of a house fire, a lot of damage tends to be caused by the water used to try putting it out!
As other people have mentioned - the question you have to ask yourself is "how much do you value your data/photos?"
If your livelihood depends upon it then the investment should reflect that.
Primary backups (per Macbook) are done using timemachine, to locally attached portable drives - I have moved away from spinny disks and have portable flash drives now (initially expensive, but worth it for the speed).
For our main business Macbooks, we have a rotation policy (mine weekly, hers fortnightly) - with the active timemachine backup disc plugged into machine, the other held in our firesafe. Being OCD about this, we have set up diary reminders to prompt to swap devices over.
When they get full, they are replace with new ones, and the old ones are kept offsite (for now at least). I tend not to let timemachine do its thing of deleting old backups to make space for the new, so keep an eye on available space on each backup drive.
For the Dell laptops we have, i use Acronis Trueimage (other backup software tools are available). Similar policy in rotating backup drives so that there is always one held in firesafe).
We also have a synology NAS as the home share/media server - we will weekly send a timemachine backup to this (i've scripted this on the macs, but have to remember to do this manually for the Dells).
The synology is running raid mirroring so allows for one drive to fail and still be recoverable.
We also have a USB backup drive plugged into the NAS that receives an incremental backup nightly from the NAS (again scripted). I have 3 of these in rotation, one plugged in, one in the firesafe, and one kept offsite. I have scripted so that it sends me an email weekly to remind me to swap the drives over
Due to the volume of stuff we now seem to generate, we now tend to keep only 12-18 months worth of data on the NAS. And the older stuff is archived off to slower storage and kept in the firesafe, or offsite (when the safe looks to be getting too full).
To most people this is probably overkill. But in my early days as an independent, i had a laptop HDD fail and despite some (expensive) attempts at data recovery, i lost a significant chunk of client development work that i then had to redo at my own expense. I vowed then that i'd never get caught out like that again. It also means i can, if asked, be able to recover a file (code, script, photo, document scan, whatever) going back over a significant period of time.
We periodically test the recovery process - usually this is prompted when one of the Macbooks decides randomly to die during a software update.
The firesafe was a huge investment (at the time), but would probably be the only thing recoverable should the worst happen to the house - it is also guaranteed against flooding - as someone who has witnessed the aftermath of a house fire, a lot of damage tends to be caused by the water used to try putting it out!
As other people have mentioned - the question you have to ask yourself is "how much do you value your data/photos?"
If your livelihood depends upon it then the investment should reflect that.
I use Onedrive and Google drive to sync most folders on local machine
I look at as three sets of files in sync in the event of a local machine melt down and even one cloud being out surely i will have access to set of data from the other cloud.
on one drive i quite like the personal vault for added layer of security for some doc's that can only be opened when i receive a txt message code to my phone
I look at as three sets of files in sync in the event of a local machine melt down and even one cloud being out surely i will have access to set of data from the other cloud.
on one drive i quite like the personal vault for added layer of security for some doc's that can only be opened when i receive a txt message code to my phone
Edited by nickv on Monday 29th June 15:09
Like most above I also do the cloud - multiple OneDrive accounts auto sync from a Qnap NAS. I never keep any files on my local PCs or Laptops.
However any auto system, or even scripted, risks going wrong and damaging both copies.
So I also do the USB drive thing, with a manual copy every few months. I keep this in a cupboard at my work so I am 'house burn down' proof (which happened to a friend and they lost their PC and backups (was before cloud)).
My grandpa (who doesn't really know what a computer is, let alone the internet or cloud) pointed out I could also get house-burn-down protection by storing it in my shed at the bottom of my garden. That caused my to get a little carried away and I have now run CAT5 down to my shed so I can have a mini data centre there synched to devices in the house...
However any auto system, or even scripted, risks going wrong and damaging both copies.
So I also do the USB drive thing, with a manual copy every few months. I keep this in a cupboard at my work so I am 'house burn down' proof (which happened to a friend and they lost their PC and backups (was before cloud)).
My grandpa (who doesn't really know what a computer is, let alone the internet or cloud) pointed out I could also get house-burn-down protection by storing it in my shed at the bottom of my garden. That caused my to get a little carried away and I have now run CAT5 down to my shed so I can have a mini data centre there synched to devices in the house...
We have all files on a mirrored NAS, nothing in documents folders on either the PCs or the Mac. If a laptop dies it's down to downloading and reinstalling software, no data will be lost.
The NAS also stores all of my ripped DVDs and music and the discs themselves are in archive storage sleeves to reduce space.
The NAS backs up everything except the DVDs to Backblaze B2 storage (DVDs excluded because of how long 1.5TB would take to backup to the cloud). Once I move to FTTP (waiting for CityFibre to open up access to other than Vodafone) I will add the DVDs to Backblaze.
The whole NAS including DVDs and the Plex library and metdata is then backed up to a USB disc using CCC once a month and, when in the office, this lives in my desk drawer.
The NAS also stores all of my ripped DVDs and music and the discs themselves are in archive storage sleeves to reduce space.
The NAS backs up everything except the DVDs to Backblaze B2 storage (DVDs excluded because of how long 1.5TB would take to backup to the cloud). Once I move to FTTP (waiting for CityFibre to open up access to other than Vodafone) I will add the DVDs to Backblaze.
The whole NAS including DVDs and the Plex library and metdata is then backed up to a USB disc using CCC once a month and, when in the office, this lives in my desk drawer.
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