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I Nearly Lost All of My Data

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Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#31

Post by derekp7 »

jordache wrote: post #21
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…

how do you power the usb drive whilst it's syncing in your car, while parked in the garage? What if the drive gets stolen?

It is hooked up to a USB battery pack, which in turn is plugged into the accessory port on the car. The hard drive powers down after the data transfer is finished.

All data is encrypted before sending to it. If it gets stolen, well it is only one of the copies of the data (however it lives hidden under the dash, and is small enough that it looks like a piece of car equipment).

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#32

Post by bhauer »

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?

It doesn't need to, assuming you're using something like rclone [1], where the encryption is done on the "client," which in this case would be the GP's home server. The client does the encryption, treating the disk attached to the Raspberry Pi as an untrusted third-party disk. As long as you keep the decryption key safe (e.g., on a USB stick stored off-site), you should be good to go in the event that you need to pull data and decrypt it.

[1] https://rclone.org/

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#33

Post by b1r6 »

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…

This is brilliant! I think I'll hack something together for this soon...

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#34

Post by timthorn »

x220 wrote: post #6

>I don’t know what happened for sure, but I think it may have been a power surge that fried the boards on both the Synology and the USB, as they were plugged in to the same socket. He didn't have a surge protector? Sweet Jesus. I don't plug my backed-up PC into anything not surge protected.

Surge protection isn't a big thing in the UK these days. You can get arresters but it's really rare now to hear of computer damage as a result of mains spikes.

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#35

Post by cyberferret »

Coincidental timing for this article! I just wrote in my own blog yesterday about the level of importance I had placed upon the data I had stored on my PC [0]. (TLDR - Data I thought was unimportant ended up actually being the opposite right after I lost my external drive).

[0] - http://devan.blaze.com.au/blog/2019/1/20/the-folly-of-unimpo...

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#36

Post by jrowley »

derekp7 wrote: post #31
jordache wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you power the usb drive whilst it's syncing in your car, while parked in the garage? What if the drive gets stolen?

It is hooked up to a USB battery pack, which in turn is plugged into the accessory port on the car. The hard drive powers down after the data transfer is finished. All data is encrypted before sending to it. If it gets stolen, well it is only one of the copies of the data (however it lives hidden under the dash, and is small enough that it looks like a piece of car equipment).

Wow what a clever/simple elegant solution. I was wondering how you set it up so it wouldn't drain your battery. Excellent work!

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#37

Post by x220 »

timthorn wrote: post #34
x220 wrote: post #6

>I don’t know what happened for sure, but I think it may have been a power surge that fried the boards on both the Synology and the USB, as they were plugged in to the same socket. He didn't have a surge protector? Sweet Jesus. I don't plug my backed-up PC into anything not surge protected.

Surge protection isn't a big thing in the UK these days. You can get arresters but it's really rare now to hear of computer damage as a result of mains spikes.

Yeah but don't you think having a raid array but not having a surge protector is missing the forest for the trees?

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#38

Post by xtagon »

mholt wrote: post #29

These kinds of scenarios are why I built Relica [1]. It backs up to local disks, network drives, remote computers (on LAN or anywhere with a public IP address), your own cloud storage, or our own special formula we call the Relica Cloud: one upload, five independent cloud providers -- replicated in real-time. And restores can use the open-source tool restic [2], so you don't have to be locked into Relica for accessin…

Can this also be used as a replacement for sync services such as Dropbox or SpiderOak ONE? In other words, can I sync accessible folders between computers in near-realtime, or is it only archival/backup storage?
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