[ale] 26G to backup

David Tomaschik david at systemoverlord.com
Sat Dec 31 11:53:14 EST 2011


On Sat, Dec 31, 2011 at 9:12 AM, Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:
> The big headache is the time required to maintain the integrity of the data.
> As was pointed out earlier, encryption is a problem looking to happen. Save
> yourself the headache and buy a data safe instead and park the archives
> there. Unless the data is clearance level stuff now and already stored
> encrypted, don't bother. If the media is stolen, the encryption WILL be
> cracked so it only make the maintenance cycle worse.

I've got to disagree here.  The most likely scenario for a theft of
your drives is a common house burglar.  They might plug a hard drive
in or see whats on a DVD, but they're certainly not going to break
encryption.  I have plenty of data I don't want anyone perusing
(mostly financial data -- 1040s, W2s, paystubs, etc.) and LUKS
encryption on the hard drives my backups reside on should be plenty to
deter "casual" snooping if the drive gets stolen.

Plus, if the drive is encrypted and later fails, you don't have to
worry about whether there's some data that's still recoverable, etc.

The only entities with the resources to break any currently decent
cryptosystem (e.g., 128-bit AES) are large corporations and
governments, and they'll just use the WRENCH method for decryption:
http://xkcd.com/538/

-- 
David Tomaschik, RHCE, LPIC-1
System Administrator/Open Source Advocate
OpenPGP: 0x5DEA789B
http://systemoverlord.com
david at systemoverlord.com


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