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Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?

#301

Post by ejj28 »

WalterBright wrote: post #235

1. copy to hard disk 2. buy a new drive every year and copy it forward 3. store a copy with relatives Note that a cloud provider: 1. can shut off your access at any time, by accident or on purpose, and you have no recourse 2. will sell your data to anyone at any time 3. will give it to any government for the asking 4. will leak it to any hacker 5. will allow employees of said cloud provider to browse your data 6. wil…

Points 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 can be fairly easily mitigated by just encrypting your backups, especially if you're using something like Duplicati which will do it automatically.

For 8, cloud storage services like Backblaze B2 can mail you a hard drive with all your data on it. I believe with B2 you can also return the drive afterwards and get your deposit on it back.

Re: Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?

#307

Post by jdlshore »

I'm paranoid about data loss, so I have a (IMO) pretty darn good backup regime. It's robust and easy. The main thing I worry I'm not protected against is bit flips.

My wife is the one who takes most of the photos in our family. For her computer (MacOS):

1) Back up her computer to USB hard drive via Time Machine every day or two.

2) Back up her computer to a USB hard drive in her office (via Time Machine) when she takes it in, about once per week.

3) When her drive starts getting full, move photos to a larger USB media drive attached to my computer. (Every year or so.)

For my computer (MacOS), including USB media drive:

1) Back up to a "main" and "redundant" USB backup drives continuously (every hour or so) using Time Machine.

2) Back up Mac hard drive, but not media drive, to "main" USB backup drive every night using SuperDuper.

3) Back up to the cloud continuously using BackBlaze.

4) Swap "main" USB backup drive with an identical drive stored in a safe deposit box (every 3 months).

This provides a nice combination of convenience, redundancy, and recent off-site backup.

Re: Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?

#308

Post by WalterBright »

xupybd wrote: post #264
uzakov wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I am nitpicking but there are some very important steps missing: Encrypt everything Check drives (health etc) Etc

I don't Encrypt my family photos. I don't understand why anyone would?

I don't encrypt them because then if I lose the encryption key or the encryption program or the encryption program won't run on my future machine, I lose it all.

Re: Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?

#309

Post by WalterBright »

javajosh wrote: post #247
WalterBright wrote: post #235

1. copy to hard disk 2. buy a new drive every year and copy it forward 3. store a copy with relatives Note that a cloud provider: 1. can shut off your access at any time, by accident or on purpose, and you have no recourse 2. will sell your data to anyone at any time 3. will give it to any government for the asking 4. will leak it to any hacker 5. will allow employees of said cloud provider to browse your data 6. wil…

Do you actually do this? Or is it theory?

Yes. Newegg spams me all the time with offers for deep discounts on disk drives, and I take advantage.

Re: Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?

#310

Post by WalterBright »

NewEntryHN wrote: post #285
jliptzin wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t really seem that hard. Buying a new hard drive and cloning data from the old one can be done pretty easily once a year.

That's a lame backup frequency though. One year of data is significant loss.

I have more than one backup drive, and rotate them. I just protect myself against aging drive failure by rotating in a new one once in a while.
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