[ale] Personal Backup Strategies?

[Pat Regan]

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On 02/03/2010 11:19 AM, David Tomaschik wrote:
> I've looked through some of the archives, but I was hoping to get a better
> take on people's personal backup strategies. I have about 200GB of data that
> needs to be protected.  This includes personal projects, academic work,
> email archives, photos, home videos, and other data that cannot readily be
> replaced.  Lately, however, this is growing at a rate of ~50GB/year, so
> expansion is obviously an important point (thank you video cameras and 10MP
> stills).  I am significantly less concerned about anything that can be
> replaced (e.g., videos of talks at conferences that I have downloaded).  I
> see 3 categories of predominant threat when it comes to backups, with
> increasing levels of backup required to protect against them.

It is pretty useful to actually break the data you back up into
different groups.  Old videos, photos, and emails shouldn't be changing.
 The old ones don't need to be handled nearly as often as your recent data.

You can just store your 200GB of old, non-changing data on <insert some
type of media here> and ship copies off to a safe location.  I drop off
off-site backups at my parents' house when I drive up to visit them.
Multiple off-site backups are even better.

That doesn't mean you can just dump 200 GB on an old hard drive and
expect it to still be good a few years from now.  You'll want to check
or replace the media on some sort of schedule.

> 1) File system corruption/accidental deletion -- external backup drive
> should be sufficient.

I run my short term backups to various flash drives and my colocated
server.  Backup to the server is automated.  I have a script I manually
run that backs up to two of my flash drives.

I have a older, small 512MB PQI i-stick (physically tiny) that I keep in
my wallet.  That gets some of my most important data.  I also have an 8
GB flash drive that easily fits all of my short term data.

I recently loaded Debian on my Android phone specifically to get rsync
running.  I have a script on the phone to rsync those same short term
backups to the microsd card in the phone.  I haven't gotten as far as
getting something like cron running to automate this one, yet.  I very
much like the idea of having a daily automated backup on a device that I
have with me every single time I leave the house.  Especially since I
won't have to think about it.

All my backups are encrypted.

I also love the general durability of most flash media.  I've pulled
data off of a CF card that went through the washer and dryer.  I can
probably throw either of my flash drives, or even my phone (yikes!) out
of this second story window (or probably higher) and still read the data.

> 2) Hard drive failure -- RAID 1?

I hate down time.  All my personal desktop machines have had some form
of RAID for about the last 10 years.

> 3) Burglary/theft/fire/flood -- I am assuming here that my entire residence
> is a loss.  This means some sort of off-site backup.
> What strategies are there to better protect myself?  Optical media seems
> nearly impossible given the sizes involved (unless I invest in blu-ray, but
> the media there is still very expensive).  Additional hard drive (encrypted)
> locked in my desk at work?  (Which makes me wonder how well hard drives
> would stand up to frequent trips in the car.)  I can only imagine network
> backups over my cable modem, and the cost of 200+ GB of network storage.

I have no trust in optical media.  I have tons of old backup CD and DVD
discs that I just can't read anywhere.  They weren't scratched and
weren't stored in a harsh environment.

I've done rdiff-backup and rsync backups over slow DSL and cable links
in the past.  As long as you can run the first backup locally you will
do just fine.  Your estimate of 50GB per year is only an average of
about 130 MB per day.  That's very doable over DSL and cable.

Pat
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