Ask HN: What kind of personal data do you backup?

#1

Post by lmarcos » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 12:35 PM UTC

Curently I'm using rsync to backup all of digital assets (music, pdfs, code, personal documents, bills, etc.). I use 2 external hard drives for this.

For some of my stuff (e.g., code, music) there is replication somewhere in the cloud as well (although I don't care much about it, since it comes "for free" as in: git push is just another backup mechanism).

I've read a lot about backup strategies in HN, and they all look more elaborated/expensive than my rsync. So I wonder: what kind of personal data is people here backing up? Why rsync isn't enough?

(Business-related data is another world).

Re: Ask HN: What kind of personal data do you backup?

#2

Post by p0d » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

I teach and have a one man saas business. I store similar data to yourself plus my business backups using rsync. I do this to an encrypted hard drive connected to a raspberry pi in my shed over wifi. The pi disk then gets backed up to Google drive. I think I pay £15 per annum for 100Gb Google drive.

Ditching mp3s halved my backups. I'm not sure why you would store mp3s these days now unless you were making the music yourself?

I imagine the Google drive story will change in the future but for now it's fine.

I"m also a few months into syncthing and really getting value out of it. As in, there is my personal archive then there are docs I want to have a Dropbox experience with. Syncthing is great. I am replicating important docs between a few machines. When I get around to it they will be sent to the pi as well.

Re: Ask HN: What kind of personal data do you backup?

#3

Post by lvspiff » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 3:40 PM UTC

rsync is just one step of data backup. I think to make sure your backups are "working" is the "not enough" part of the equation. Sure you get confirmation of the files being copied but what is confirming they copied correctly and you can access them?

Re: Ask HN: What kind of personal data do you backup?

#4

Post by tkiolp4 » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 7:04 PM UTC

p0d wrote: post #2

I teach and have a one man saas business. I store similar data to yourself plus my business backups using rsync. I do this to an encrypted hard drive connected to a raspberry pi in my shed over wifi. The pi disk then gets backed up to Google drive. I think I pay £15 per annum for 100Gb Google drive. Ditching mp3s halved my backups. I'm not sure why you would store mp3s these days now unless you were making the music…

> I'm not sure why you would store mp3s these days now unless you were making the music yourself?

I also keep mp3 files (albums) in my hard drives. How else do you ensure that you have access to your favorite artists in the future? I’m assuming here that popular music streaming platforms would not be around in 10 years (others will take over). Also, storing your music in the cloud requires you having internet connection to play your music... imho that’s a disadvantage compared to storing your music locally.

Re: Ask HN: What kind of personal data do you backup?

#5

Post by fiftyacorn » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 7:31 AM UTC

Google drive and scheduled Google takeouts

I'm thinking of getting all my historic paperwork ocr'd, and storing that too

Re: Ask HN: What kind of personal data do you backup?

#6

Post by zzo38computer » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 6:23 PM UTC

I backup all files on the computer onto three DVDs, using compressed tape archives.

Some files are public, and some of those files are also backed up on internet, e.g. fossil repositories are also mirrored on chiselapp.

Re: Ask HN: What kind of personal data do you backup?

#7

Post by tanay2802 » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 11:04 AM UTC

It can be subjective but in my case it would be passwords, images, videos, important documents, etc.

Re: Ask HN: What kind of personal data do you backup?

#8

Post by cosmodisk » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 12:22 PM UTC

I have tons upon tons of photos and videos and because I'm paranoid, I store them on S3, OneDrive,and an external hdd.