LPT: Check all your stored hard drives and CDs/DVDs at least once a year. And never have only one type of backup. You could wind up losing everything.

Submitted by bigdicksnfriedchickn t3_121sanu in LifeProTips

Too many times, I’ve seen people in tears because the hard drive they thought was safely in a drawer didn’t work when it was needed and plugged in. Hard drives can simply stop working, even SSDs and USBs can develop faults. CDs/DVDs can degrade physically, leaving them unreadable, and now it’s a real danger that you won’t find a computer with a CD player when you need one. You have to keep checking and always make sure you have another copy of your data somewhere else, and periodically copy it to new devices.

On top of that you can have a sudden house fire, flood, electric surge, tornado or other disaster. You can get evicted or locked out, stuff like a hard drive can easily get stolen.

It’s best to have multiple copies and use different types of storage. One cloud service and one physical device is the minimum anyone should have. For super sensitive files, think about an additional location like your office or a bank locker.

The things you want to keep safe, like family photos and important documents, can all disappear in an instant. So always back up data before you need it.

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Comments

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CasualObservationist t1_jdn4xhg wrote

The rule of three when it comes to preserving data.

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luciodipa89 t1_jdn57dw wrote

Well, it's always good to have backup backups, just in case your backup backup backup fails.

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Bongos-Not-Bombs t1_jdz3zsy wrote

The important part about 3-2-1 is that the 1 is not in the same physical location, and ideally not the same format, as the other two.

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datagorb t1_jdnun8c wrote

I used to work at a small Apple retailer on a university campus. One day, a student came in to ask if we could restore a bunch of files that she had lost when her computer crashed. She had clearly been crying before coming in.

Turns out, she had lost all of the photos and videos she had with her mom, who had recently passed away.

We were able to get the files back, but we didn’t give her the computer back until after we made her swear that she would make multiple backups of them.

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AforAppleBforBallz t1_jdokq88 wrote

My assumption is that the cloud services I am paying for are making at least 2 backups of my data. Can someone provide a good example of why I should store data physically? (not opposed to it, just need a good reason to make the investment)

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bigdicksnfriedchickn OP t1_jdpw6v4 wrote

For one, you need to trust that they’re actually doing that. Free or basic consumer accounts might not have that protection. Data centre locations can also get cut off like we saw after the easy coast storms some time ago. They can also randomly flag your content as pirated or illegal and lock your account without notice or recourse. Google and Microsoft accounts can be stolen and you can be locked out of them, losing everything.

Services can decide to shut down at any time. Sure, Google and OneDrive aren’t tiny companies but for them business is business and one day they might just decide to pull out or at least raise prices unreasonably. I used to use copy.com and Crashplan, both of which disappeared.

Also if you need to retrieve everything, like after a PC crash, it’s a huge pain to download. It can take weeks and you have to manually set up small batches because downloads randomly crap out. If it’s after a disaster like a fire or storm when there’s no internet access, you might be stranded.

There’s also huge misunderstandings about backup services vs sync services (like most consumer cloud options). You might think you have backups when removing a local file deleted your online copy as well.

Finally the physical copy is just more peace of mind.

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AforAppleBforBallz t1_jdqx7j5 wrote

Thank you for your response.

You made some strong points and I’m convinced that I need to have physical backups of my data (at least the important stuff).

Do you have some good recommendations for storage options? I have a few terabytes of data but might increase in the future (lots of 4k videos). I’ve thought of a NAS but they seem to be quite expensive most of the time. Are there any affordable ones?

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ChrisGeritol t1_jdnatsb wrote

What OP is discussing (among other things) is called "bit rot" (among other terms). Just powering them up periodically for magnetic media isn't the complete solution. You need to read and re-write the data. In the old days, there was a product called Spinrite that basically would read and re-write data and would try to recover missing data by re-reading the media many times.

For SSDs, they need power periodically to maintain the electrical charge.

Cds, DVDs, and blu-ray don't have either of the magnetic or electrical issues, but still can physically decay over many, many years.

The backup mantra is "two is one, one is none" when it comes to copies of data. Of course the same people who preach it don't necessarily follow that themselves.

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ShadeBaron t1_jdo7u8j wrote

Honestly I just want to add that if you have any kind of data on an HDD AKA a spinning disc hard drive you need to migrate them immediately to solid state for sure I definitely would not rely on that for the long term in any way shape or form. The way that I have this situation set up is I have a cloud service with Google for $9 or so a month for 2 terabytes I have a Nas system at the house and then I also have actual regular hard drives that are static. Triple redundancy

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keepthetips t1_jdn4a70 wrote

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a-friendgineer t1_jdr2wv3 wrote

Thank you.

I don’t hold on to many sentimental things, so if my computer busts I’m like “meh”

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