I Nearly Lost All of My Data • Hacker News Board

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#111

Post by 2Ccltvcm » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 2:59 AM UTC

wtallis wrote: post #51

derekp7 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget to replace your surge protector on an annual basis (or more frequently if you have really dirty power). Also, you can have a nasty fault in your PSU that fries everything also (If anyone knows of a surge protector that sits between the power supply and the motherboard, I'd really like to get one).

> (If anyone knows of a surge protector that sits between the power supply and the motherboard, I'd really like to get one) I think the best you can do is just get a top-quality power supply. SeaSonic will sell you a ridiculously overengineered box with a 12-year warranty for $160; it's guaranteed to have a longer useful lifetime than any other component in your computer, probably even including the case itself.

Just use a surge protector literally right next to your PSU.

Cheap whole house surge protectors are pretty much useless. It will work for a few times, but the MOVs will degrade and fail pretty quickly. Every time a big inductive load switches on or off its going to cause a voltage spike that is going to trip the MOVs. or the MOV's Trip voltage is so high (to avoid quick degration) that they really don't provide any protect. Really a good whole house protector needs to use SADs (Silicone Avalance Diodes) or a passive LC filter. Transtector, Thor Systems (SADs) or Pricewheeler (LC Filter). These protectors can take many more surge hits than the ones you listed above. Why whole house Surge protectors don't work.https://zerosurge.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/USTech.pdfE... with a whole house protector it still would be a good idea to use point of use surge protectors. Since the surge has to reach the Whole House protector before it can be clamped. Surges can reach your electrical devices faster than a whole house protector can clamp. It only takes a few nanoseconds to destroy a microchip. For instance say you have a vacuum cleaner plugged into the same circuit your computer is connected to. the vacuum cleaner jams, causing a surge that will hit your computer (since it closer) than the whole house proetector is (down in your basement).

Source: comment section on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PqO0aQaGDY

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#112

Post by _emacsomancer_ » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 3:03 AM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #95

If you have 4TB of data saved at home you are a hoarder. Why do you have that much stuff. I don't have any data at home that I would miss very much if I lost it.

Why? I have lots of PDFs, photos, video. It's a lot more convenient being a 'digital' 'hoarder' than a physical one (though I actually have way too many physical books as well).

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#113

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 3:04 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#114

Post by _emacsomancer_ » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 3:04 AM UTC

pmlnr wrote: post #57

bsder wrote: post #2

Z ... F ... S. And at least Raid-Z. Raid-5 and Raid-6 are now at probability of failure levels that your rebuild is likely to throw an error.

Sure. Encrypted ZFS with FreeBSD, have a power loss, goodbye data. Should have read the manual though, it does tell you to make a backup of certain data ranges in case of encrypted ZFS for this specific case, so it's partly my fault. That said, I'm using ZFS ever since, but on top of LUKs with linux.

So LUKS is more resilient than native ZFS encryption to power loss?

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#115

Post by rocky1138 » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 3:05 AM UTC

gtirloni wrote: post #24

derekp7 wrote: post #13

The best solution I found as an alternative to an off-site copy is to set up a USB drive and something like a Raspberry Pi in my car. When I pull into the garage, the house server senses it and syncs new data to it. This can be supplemented further by having it auto sync to a computer in your office whenever you pull into work. Add in some monitoring so you can get a phone alert if any of the synced copies are more t…

Does the RaspberryPi have enough CPU for disk encryption?

I'm not sure about disk encryption, but I know that the Raspberry Pi didn't have the juice to cut it when Syncthing was running, calculating hashes for my files. I eventually gave up, hoping that some day Go would support the use of GPU hardware to hash combined with accelerated drivers for the Pi's graphics card.

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#116

Post by skookumchuck » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 3:13 AM UTC

I've been working with computers for so long that total failure is not a probability, it's a certainty. Last year, in fact, my desktop burst into flames. I've had smoke come out of desktops several times before, but that was the first flamer.

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#117

Post by hendry » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 3:14 AM UTC

Inspired by this post, I decided to document my backup strategy and shortcomings here: https://natalian.org/2019/01/20/Data_I_would_not_like_to_los...

tl;dr I'm trusting Apple.

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#118

Post by 1kGarand » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 3:28 AM UTC

walterbell wrote: post #85

1kGarand wrote: post #62

I see some terrible backup strategies here. 1. Backups should not be on a single drive. 2. Backups without checksums will result in corruption. 3. Offsite is a must. 4. Unencrypted off site backup means someone already copied your data. 5. Encrypted offsite backups should have forward secrecy. So different keys for each file and keys file gets backed up encrypted. My backup strategy: File server runs zfs raidz with D…

> Encrypted offsite backups should have forward secrecy. So different keys for each file and keys file gets backed up encrypted. Any references on PFS for backups? Was there no existing OSS backup solution that implements PFS?

Most encrypted backup solutions are really bad with protecting keys. Fixed ivs are ok for one file. Not ok for possibly millions of small files. Basically exposed your private key along with your backup.

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#119

Post by ValentineC » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 3:33 AM UTC

toufiqbarhamov wrote: post #106

chrsstrm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here's your recurring reminder that all cloud storage services fingerprint your uploaded files looking for TOS violations. If you haven't encrypted your backups first you are at the will of the service you are using.

I use Arq to backup, and it’s a lovely little program that isn’t a resource hog, and handles the encryption. I use it to back everything up, a copy to a removable drive, a copy that gets updated every day online, and another once a month online on a seperate server. It seems to work well, and it really is painless,after the initial seeding.

Adding on: Arq has a open source restore tool, which I think is important in the long term: https://github.com/arqbackup/arq_restore

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#120

Post by matthew-wegner » Sun, Jan 20, 2019, 3:50 AM UTC

ken wrote: post #54

cheeseprocedure wrote: post #26

A surge from a lightning strike near my home travelled over the cable line to kill a network switch and the WAN port on a firewall. (Strangely, the cable modem was spared.) Everything was on a decent UPS... but I’d completely forgotten the cable line.

Most of the UPSs and surge protectors I've seen for home use include coax, ethernet, and/or telephone protection, too, e.g., https://www.apc.com/shop/us/en/products/APC-Performance-Surg...

Lighting is pretty rough.

You can completely air gap your network from the outside line by converting to fiber at some point (probably between your cable modem and your router, in a DOCSIS setup). Isn't foolproof, because lightning can induce current on your wires directly, but it'll help these kinds of scenarios.