I’ve always heard that you folks like to keep tons of backups of your stuff. I have also heard that there is this 3-2-1 rule about keeping you backups. My question is: do you follow it personally or is it something that people just tell you to follow?
Not yet. My 2nd form of media will be Blu-ray 100GB Discs, and second location will probably be another house 30 minutes away. I DO have about 3-4 copies of my most important data.
There are excellent articles that go over all this. Do a something search.
Bottom line, yes, you should at least do 3-2-1 methodology. More than that is gravy.
I do main data at home, external HD as backup offsite (I update maybe 1-2x a year otherwise it’s turned off/unplugged), and any new files not on the backup are in cloud storage + local HD, separate from main data.
If either drive failed I’d just order a new one since the odds of both failing within a couple days would be low.
I have a 2-2-0 for now. The problem is with 100 TB of data, it’s hard to find an offsite back up that is reasonable priced.
Everyone else seems to have parents or these things called “friends” that they can ask to hold onto. Wonder where I can find them.You may laugh but I burned all my super important stuff(hi res scans of photos going back to wheN they got off boat and lot S of other pics and vid’s ) onto 50 Blu-ray disks. Since I have no friends I’d trust I found a piece of 6 inch pvc pipe glued cap on one end and threaded plug on other leak checked it put disks in it and buried in the yard a foot and half deep with p gravel around it. My main worry is Forrest fire I live in woods. Only thing in my backyard is me and the deer and a big ass raccoon. It doesn’t need updating. It’s been underground 5 yrs now I should dig it up and have a look I suppose. My daughter that lives a few hundred miles away knows where it is incase I get ate by raccoons. But not what’s inside of it. She has the originals. So not a good place for digital copies. There’s also a note in my will for someone to go dig it up. It’s not hard to find has a paver stone as x marks spot.
This seems fairly sensible to be honest
It’s not.
Why not?
Are you really asking why it’s not a good idea to go dig a hole in some random corner of the forest and store your “sealed with glue” PVC pipe full of really important media on DVDs to save for your daughter (who, coincidentally, also has the originals already?) for long term safe data storage?
Or do you just wanna chat?
I mean, I’m cool w/ the second one but I have a hard time taking anyone seriously for the first one.
Have you considered encrypting the data and storing it with a cloud provider?
No I don’t want to have a forever reoccurring bill. And who knows ten years from now the encryption method we use now can be cracked by some method we don’t know of now. Or the password is lost to time. And I dont trust the cloud much I use it for some stuff but not the Crown Jewels. My biggest fear is that I die they sell house new owner finds it that’s why I have it in my will to dig up before house is sold. But I’ll be dead and won’t care also. But they don’t need to see a video of my daughter when she’s two months old pooping on me.
you definitely sound like someone who lives in the woods
So it’s 6 inch PVC… how long is it? We need to know it’s capacity in TB.
Optical disks buried in a back yard… do you check them for disk rot? If you aren’t testing the restore, you don’t have a backup!
I have 3:2:1 for my crucial data ( pictures of family and travels and digital documents like tax returns). Basically one main copy another copy on an old nas with shucked drives not connected to the internet and one cloud copy. It is worth it because I would hate hate to lose that data.
I have 2:1 for my media. Just a local copy . If the apartment goes up in flames or a freak lightning burns it down I will have to re-download it again or I will live without it and ghats fine. For a long time the media had no backup but just raid and snapshots to protect against hard-drive failures and dumb user errors.
It’s all about your means and risk appetite.
In my case most of the backups are done to local drive and to Acronis Cloud, some of these backups tasks are also going to external drive and FreeNAS share. Lastly, quarterly backups are going to Glacier Deep Archive in encrypted containers.
What do you use for encrypted containers? Veracrypt?
Locally, I have RAID on my NAS, my sentimental stuff is mostly synced with other systems through seafile (similar to nextcloud), and is also backed up to backblaze.
For everything else, it’s just RAID.
No. My media data is not important enough
Important photos are triple cloud backed up.
For everything that is personal, such as photos, videos, file backups, etc, I follow 3-2-1.
I have a raid1 array with all my files, and any new files are pushed to aws S3 in a weekly basis. its weekly as i may have plenty of GB of photos and videos after a big trip and with my current internet speed 24 hrs may not be enough to upload everything :/
For cold storage stuff, aka everything until last year I also copy it at an old nas at my parents house that is only connected to power and network when i need to add the backups and 2-3 times per year otherwise.
It’s also good to keep a raid aray protected with a surge protector and UPS.
The 2 in this rule isn’t clear: 2 different media?
Why is it important if it’s DVD & HDD or SSD & HDD?
For home use, it’s just two different devices that can be the same type, like harddrives in two servers, but not redundant data storage in one device, like RAID or just having two copies of files on the same drive. For corporate, most will probably interpret it as two different media types, like harddrive and tape. You want them seperate to prevent accidental deletion of files, ransomware and such.
Diversity in Failure Modes: Different storage media have different failure modes and life expectancies. For example, a hard disk drive (HDD) might be susceptible to mechanical failure, while a solid-state drive (SSD) might have limitations in terms of write cycles. By diversifying the media types, you reduce the risk that a single failure mode (like a power surge, mechanical wear, or temperature sensitivity) could compromise all of your backups.
Reducing Common Points of Failure: If all copies of your data are stored on the same type of device, they may all be vulnerable to the same type of failure. For example, if you have all your backups on different HDDs from the same manufacturer and there’s a manufacturing defect, all your backups could fail simultaneously.
Technology and Ageing: Different technologies age and become obsolete at different rates. By using multiple types of media, you’re less likely to find yourself in a situation where all your backups are stored on outdated or unsupported technology.
Physical and Environmental Threats: Different types of media have varying levels of resilience to physical and environmental threats like fire, water damage, magnetic interference, etc. By diversifying, you increase the chances that at least one of your backup mediums will survive a catastrophic event.
Data Recovery Options: In the event of a failure, different types of media may offer different data recovery options. Some media might be easier or more cost-effective to recover data from than others.
CSVs ftw
Kinda-sorta…? The most sensitive data was more like 5-3-1: 5 copies (in my twin laptops, in my HDD-based NAS, one in my mobile external HDD, and one ‘offsite’ with my family back in my hometown). Then for my work data it was 3-2-1: main laptop, my NAS backup, and offsite (updated every holiday). For entertainment which are mostly loot from the seven seas, 2.5-1 rule: I stash bulk of them in my NAS (which I mostly stream to my laptop) and copy what I need to share with folks to the mobile HDD) and the other copy is also offsite
I use rclone with encryption via cloud and also endpoints backup.
I follow it for the most critical data, other data get just one copy (but those data is not important to me)
I’m a photographer with almost 25TB of photographs.
Primary storage: diy truenas On-site backup: off the shelf branded nas Off-site backup: cloud storage.
Just a note: any automated backup you need to be 100% sure you have set it up to not sync deletions.
