this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
50 points (100.0% liked)

Asklemmy

42480 readers
1709 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
50
Best way to backup files (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
28 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I have about 500GB of data (photos, documents, videos etc.) that I have accumulated over the years. Currently, I keep them on my computer and rsync all additions / changes once a month or so to an external hard drive. Do I need to be worried about data loss (sectors going bad, bit rot, bit flip, whatever it is called)?

To clarify,

  1. None of this is commercially important; I just don't want to get into a situation where I look up an old family photo or video twenty years down the line and it has got corrupted.

  2. Both my computer and the external HD are HDDs. They are fairly cheap here (and very cheap if second hand). Buying SSDs or dedicated hardware would be expensive.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Right, which is why I prefer to rely on local backups. Much cheaper in the long run.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

I used to work with a guy who was religious about backing up his files to an external drives. Until someone broke into his house and stole his computer AND his external drives. He lost everything.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks ago

It's always a good idea to have an off-site backup (e.g. in case of fires, robbery, natural disasters, etc). If you prefer to manage them yourself, an option is to find someone else who also needs an off-site backup and exchange disk space. You do your off-site on their machine, and they do theirs on yours. With external HDDs, you can just have someone else hold on to it for you at a different location. You can come up with fancier schemes to reduce the chances of data loss or to make the process simpler if you care to do so.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I also like local only with a similar set up as yours, rsync to and HDD and to an SSD.
But I also would recommend you to follow that suggestion, you need to have an external backup managed by someone else (encrypted, of course) so you can have options if anything happens to everything in your local.
It's up to you how much you're willing to pay to be sure to be able to retrieve your data.

I'm using iDrive e2, it says it has a limited offer, but it's been there for over a year.

Im basically paying $1.25 for 2TB per month (it's charged at once for 24 months) https://www.idrive.com/s3-storage-e2/pricing

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I see, I'll look into it then. Thank you.