This is your occasional backup reminder - if you haven’t yet, go start setting up backups of any kind.
If you think you don’t need backups, delete everything you have on the device you’re using right now.
If that seems like a bad idea then you need backups.
@NanoRaptor Then test restoring them. Stephen Tweedie used to say there were 3 types of people
- People who had never lost all their data, and made no backups
- People who had lost all their data, and made backups
- People who had failed to restore a backup and checked their backups work
@NanoRaptor the way you formulated that was quite convincing. I might steal that next time I try to talk about the need for backups.
@AndreasDavour Go for it - I'm sure I stole it from someone else at some point years ago too.
Thank you!
I've never - will never - use "cloud" storage as it's just someone else's server. Always used an external hard drive.
Doing back up now, cheers!
@kaffando @NanoRaptor use both. That external hard drive will be just as destroyed as the original if there's a house fire.
@rogerlipscombe @kaffando I have a few kinds. backup my desktop to the cloud, and to my NAS as a temp backup but then a real backup of the whole NAS to one of a pair of external HDs. One of which I take to a different location each time I swap the other in.
You need multiple types of backup, too.
One of for the 'oh shit I deleted that file but I actually still need it' situation. The ideal setup for that is that it happens automatically multiple times per day and is low friction to restore from.
One for the 'I lost everything' situation (fire, theft, ransomware, etc). For that you need off site backups that are not connected to your main infra. This conflicts with the requirements for the other type.
- replies
- 1
- announces
- 0
- likes
- 1
So I use filesystem snapshots to deal with the first, and a bacula-based backup that writes (encrypted) to AWS storage gateway for the second.
@NanoRaptor And include in that the data other apps are ‘looking after’ for you. In their own proprietary format. That requires their app (and only their app) to access. And for both them and their servers to keep on liking you. And for their company to stay afloat.
If all of that seems likely, by all means never export your data to an open format — and then back it up.
@NanoRaptor I just rdsfores files I deleted fhanks to a bad `git` command. Also test your restores.