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How I store my files

unixsheikh.com

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Re: How I store my files

#51

Post by noveltyaccount »

ga3h wrote: post #44

Thumb drives. Financial stuff, copies of legal documents, large libraries of PDF books, reports, etc., etc. And then back the main drive up to FOUR thumb drive backups. Reasons: (1) USB drives are huge now. (2) Convenient - can move from one PC to another easily. (3) Convenient - I do NOT have time to mess with other solutions. (4) Safety - valuable financial stuff almost always OFFLINE reducing hacker vulnerability.…

I'll add - drives from different brands. I had a mirrored RAID 1 fail at one point (in the '00s, spinning magnetic hard drives), two identical drives, and they failed within days of each other. One drive died, I ordered a replacement, and before the replacement arrived the second drive died. The shock and disbelief I felt of my foolproof RAID solution going belly-up on me! And I still can't believe I didn't turn off the machine while I waited for the replacement to arrive.

Re: How I store my files

#52

Post by mnemnc »

I feel like I have a fairly solid backup system for all of my important files. They are protected against elementary disasters and cyber attacks alike.

However the only thing I struggle with are my phone photos. I recently caved in and started using iCloud Photos due to the convenience of having all my phone photos alwas available, searchable and tagged, even if the library size exceeds my phone‘s capacity.

Does anyone know a reliable and automatable way to back up this iCloud photo library on a self hosted server?

Re: How I store my files

#53

Post by dangerface »

shreddit wrote: post #45
ga3h wrote: post #44

Thumb drives. Financial stuff, copies of legal documents, large libraries of PDF books, reports, etc., etc. And then back the main drive up to FOUR thumb drive backups. Reasons: (1) USB drives are huge now. (2) Convenient - can move from one PC to another easily. (3) Convenient - I do NOT have time to mess with other solutions. (4) Safety - valuable financial stuff almost always OFFLINE reducing hacker vulnerability.…

Doesn’t thumbdrive data decay over time? Like all flash based storage types do

Yes they do. I used pen drives for backups after I found one that was like 10 years old and still had my old cv on it. I stored my backups on two identical pen drives I stopped doing this when I went to backup and discovered one of the pen drives was corrupt and lost all its data.

They are super cheap and fairly reliable but not quite reliable enough for backups.

Re: How I store my files

#54

Post by BrS96bVxXBLzf5B »

rsync wrote: post #50

"While I know of some really good cloud providers, such as rsync.net and Tarsnap, I recommend that you never trust cloud providers blindly." This is very good advice. That being said, humans need heuristics and shortcuts to aid in decision-making. I hope the fact that rsync.net has been doing this work since 2001 is helpful in that regard. ... "There exist some really cool open source backup solutions such as Borg, R…

> That being said, humans need heuristics and shortcuts to aid in decision-making. I hope the fact that rsync.net has been doing this work since 2001 is helpful in that regard.

This is implied by the 'blindly' part. Searching "cloud storage provider", seeing rsync.net listed and picking it with a thrown dart would be blind. A quick search to see that it's been around for a while and doesn't have any crazy horror stories attached is part of becoming informed.

Re: How I store my files

#55

Post by rolobio »

mnemnc wrote: post #52

I feel like I have a fairly solid backup system for all of my important files. They are protected against elementary disasters and cyber attacks alike. However the only thing I struggle with are my phone photos. I recently caved in and started using iCloud Photos due to the convenience of having all my phone photos alwas available, searchable and tagged, even if the library size exceeds my phone‘s capacity. Does anyo…

icloud-photo-downloader: https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

I've used this to great success! As far as I could tell, it grabbed every photo and video at the highest quality. Very happy.

Re: How I store my files

#56

Post by Bellyache5 »

mnemnc wrote: post #52

I feel like I have a fairly solid backup system for all of my important files. They are protected against elementary disasters and cyber attacks alike. However the only thing I struggle with are my phone photos. I recently caved in and started using iCloud Photos due to the convenience of having all my phone photos alwas available, searchable and tagged, even if the library size exceeds my phone‘s capacity. Does anyo…

I'm also interested in this. I have iCloud for Windows installed on a VM with lots of attached storage, but it doesn't seem to persistently/reliably download photos unattended.

I suppose another way to do it would be with a Mac and then periodically backing up the local Photo Library, but that still leaves the photos tied up in Apple's proprietary library format. Plus you need a spare Mac just laying around and always on.

Re: How I store my files

#57

Post by Bellyache5 »

rolobio wrote: post #55
mnemnc wrote: post #52

I feel like I have a fairly solid backup system for all of my important files. They are protected against elementary disasters and cyber attacks alike. However the only thing I struggle with are my phone photos. I recently caved in and started using iCloud Photos due to the convenience of having all my phone photos alwas available, searchable and tagged, even if the library size exceeds my phone‘s capacity. Does anyo…

icloud-photo-downloader: https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do... I've used this to great success! As far as I could tell, it grabbed every photo and video at the highest quality. Very happy.

Brilliant! Thank you.

Re: How I store my files

#58

Post by wazoox »

mnemnc wrote: post #52

I feel like I have a fairly solid backup system for all of my important files. They are protected against elementary disasters and cyber attacks alike. However the only thing I struggle with are my phone photos. I recently caved in and started using iCloud Photos due to the convenience of having all my phone photos alwas available, searchable and tagged, even if the library size exceeds my phone‘s capacity. Does anyo…

I don't know how it works on iPhones, but on Android Nextcloud does this just fine.

Re: How I store my files

#59

Post by mceachen »

ga3h wrote: post #44

Thumb drives. Financial stuff, copies of legal documents, large libraries of PDF books, reports, etc., etc. And then back the main drive up to FOUR thumb drive backups. Reasons: (1) USB drives are huge now. (2) Convenient - can move from one PC to another easily. (3) Convenient - I do NOT have time to mess with other solutions. (4) Safety - valuable financial stuff almost always OFFLINE reducing hacker vulnerability.…

Make sure you periodically refresh your backups that are stored on flash memory devices. Depending on the media, cell voltage drift can cause data corruption that overwhelms the built-in ECC in as little as 5-7 years.

Re: How I store my files

#60

Post by dangerface »

> These tools work really great, until they don't!

Huh? Whats the problem? How is ZFS any different because its lower level?

> ZFS without ECC memory is no worse than any other file system without ECC memory.

You really do need ECC memory unless you are ok with your pool becoming corrupt every 6 months or so. Im just saying this from my experience of running a ZFS server without ECC, the data wasn't critical so I left it like that for 3 years before replacing the memory with ECC now its fixed.

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