That’s great and I agree, but I think you need an offsite backup too, at least for your most important data. Your home security might be best-in-class but you’re still susceptible to flood, fire...
That’s great and I agree, but I think you need an offsite backup too, at least for your most important data. Your home security might be best-in-class but you’re still susceptible to flood, fire (fire safe notwithstanding), earthquake, etc. It’s never a good idea to keep all your eggs in one basket, even if it’s a triple-locked titanium basket.
I'm getting older and sadly, having a hard time staying current with certain things. As a result, I'm distrustful of stuff like cloud/storage services. When I see anything that claims to "safely...
I'm getting older and sadly, having a hard time staying current with certain things. As a result, I'm distrustful of stuff like cloud/storage services. When I see anything that claims to "safely store your passwords", I'm like AHHH NO. I feel lucky in that I have 2 Toshiba hard drives that are both 700GB that I bought in person at a Best Buy around 2012(ish). When I read about fraudulent usb drives, I started using the Toshiba HDDs more. I also have a planner binder where things like accounts, passwords and personal health tracking gets recorded.
In the spirit of a thread about keeping data safe, it’s worth noting that those drives will be well into their expected end of life if they’re ~10 years old. Depends what kind of safety you’re...
I feel lucky in that I have 2 Toshiba hard drives that are both 700GB that I bought in person at a Best Buy around 2012(ish)
In the spirit of a thread about keeping data safe, it’s worth noting that those drives will be well into their expected end of life if they’re ~10 years old.
Depends what kind of safety you’re looking for, of course: local disks will indeed be pretty safe from data breach (at least assuming your computers and network are decently secure themselves), but not so much from data loss. I’d definitely be thinking about a backup strategy if you’re looking for the latter, and without wanting to cause too much worry, I’d be thinking about it ASAP if I had anything irreplaceable like photos on a decade old consumer drive.
Thanks for the advice. I have a tendency to sit on stuff until it's practically obsolete. I mean, I still have an old Technics am fm stereo tuner from the 70s that was handed down to me. Damn I'm...
Thanks for the advice. I have a tendency to sit on stuff until it's practically obsolete. I mean, I still have an old Technics am fm stereo tuner from the 70s that was handed down to me. Damn I'm getting old.
Apologies if you already got it, but because I couldn't tell from your response - when they say "end of life," they meant that the hard drives will physically stop working and you'll have to pay a...
Apologies if you already got it, but because I couldn't tell from your response - when they say "end of life," they meant that the hard drives will physically stop working and you'll have to pay a service to try to recover the data off of them. It's not a question of obsolescence necessarily.
Totally understandable, and honestly a good thing in many cases - there’s far too much ewaste and disposable junk out there for my tastes as it is! @R3qn65 hit the nail on the head, though: the...
Totally understandable, and honestly a good thing in many cases - there’s far too much ewaste and disposable junk out there for my tastes as it is!
@R3qn65 hit the nail on the head, though: the issue is that if a stereo tuner eventually gives up one day and never works again, it’s just time to buy a new one. When a hard drive does the same* it’s not just the physical drive that’s gone but all the data on it too.
Data recovery costs hundreds or thousands of dollars and sometimes even then just isn’t possible; good backups cost tens of dollars and are infinitely more reliable.
And yeah, may well be that you already know all this - my apologies if so, but hopefully it might still be helpful to someone else in that case!
*It is “when” not “if”, as well - I’ve got plenty that didn’t make it to double digit years. The type you have are mechanical and the parts just wear out eventually; SSDs also wear and fail, but in a very different way.
It's worth mentioning that there are plenty of cloud service providers that allow you to provide and control your own encryption key, effectively ensuring you're the only one who can access the...
When I see anything that claims to "safely store your passwords", I'm like AHHH NO.
It's worth mentioning that there are plenty of cloud service providers that allow you to provide and control your own encryption key, effectively ensuring you're the only one who can access the content.
Of course you still lack control, you can't ensure the data isn't lost in a hardware failure, etc. So keeping a local backup is definitely the way to go for important data. But cloud doesn't have to be as scary as you think.
I think they refer to USB drivers which are "fake" and show to the system that they have more storage than they really do, but you'll only find those if you buy cheap drives that are obviously...
I think they refer to USB drivers which are "fake" and show to the system that they have more storage than they really do, but you'll only find those if you buy cheap drives that are obviously scams.
The worries they have are things they'll never encounter in the real world if they spend an hour or so doing research.
That suggests your passwords are low-entropy and/or non-unique. I encourage everyone to use randomly generated strings of 20+ chars, and never reuse any across different sites. There are myriad...
That suggests your passwords are low-entropy and/or non-unique. I encourage everyone to use randomly generated strings of 20+ chars, and never reuse any across different sites.
There are myriad ways to store passwords like that — I find a good password manager to be tremendously beneficial, but you could also keep them in a local encrypted file or even just handwritten in a paper notebook. Probably not in your head though. The important thing is that the passwords are created secure; how you keep track of them afterwards is a different matter.
I use xkpasswd style passwords memorised via the method of loci - I certainly wouldn't be reusing / using bad ones. Only forgotten a handful in the last five years or so.
I use xkpasswd style passwords memorised via the method of loci - I certainly wouldn't be reusing / using bad ones. Only forgotten a handful in the last five years or so.
I also store my data at home, no cloud. I run RAID5 on my NAS (DIY kind) to have some redundancy against losing the data and I have off-site backup on RAID1. I have both machines cnnected to...
I also store my data at home, no cloud. I run RAID5 on my NAS (DIY kind) to have some redundancy against losing the data and I have off-site backup on RAID1. I have both machines cnnected to internet but behind router wth careful port forwarding and private keys handsakes, no plain password or any of that stuff.
Same here. My girlfriend and I don't live together. I set up two machines that sync both our personal data over SSH and then make a backup of the mirrored copy. The benefit of syncing the full...
Same here. My girlfriend and I don't live together. I set up two machines that sync both our personal data over SSH and then make a backup of the mirrored copy. The benefit of syncing the full data rather than the backups is that both of us immediately have access to all data in case the other gets in an emergency.
Obviously, this scheme only works with someone you trust completely.
I have full control.over boh machines, they areboth headless and the backup one doesn't even have other users than me. The main inhouse one is actual NAS with home folder for all people on it. I...
I have full control.over boh machines, they areboth headless and the backup one doesn't even have other users than me. The main inhouse one is actual NAS with home folder for all people on it.
I don't do full backups and I have a few reasons why:
slow internet on both ends (though incremental/rsync would work fine)
price of storage (HDDs)
worthiness of data; I very highly value photos and videos, whereas if I lost my documents or savegames or music or whatever it would hurt a bit, but nowhere near of losing personal history
I may think a bit more about syncing a bit more than photos, though. Thanks for the idea!
"There is no such as 'the cloud', it's just someone else's computer"
For the most critical data, you've got to follow the 321 rule. 3 copies, in at least 2 different types of storage, 1 being at a separate location.
That’s great and I agree, but I think you need an offsite backup too, at least for your most important data. Your home security might be best-in-class but you’re still susceptible to flood, fire (fire safe notwithstanding), earthquake, etc. It’s never a good idea to keep all your eggs in one basket, even if it’s a triple-locked titanium basket.
I'm getting older and sadly, having a hard time staying current with certain things. As a result, I'm distrustful of stuff like cloud/storage services. When I see anything that claims to "safely store your passwords", I'm like AHHH NO. I feel lucky in that I have 2 Toshiba hard drives that are both 700GB that I bought in person at a Best Buy around 2012(ish). When I read about fraudulent usb drives, I started using the Toshiba HDDs more. I also have a planner binder where things like accounts, passwords and personal health tracking gets recorded.
In the spirit of a thread about keeping data safe, it’s worth noting that those drives will be well into their expected end of life if they’re ~10 years old.
Depends what kind of safety you’re looking for, of course: local disks will indeed be pretty safe from data breach (at least assuming your computers and network are decently secure themselves), but not so much from data loss. I’d definitely be thinking about a backup strategy if you’re looking for the latter, and without wanting to cause too much worry, I’d be thinking about it ASAP if I had anything irreplaceable like photos on a decade old consumer drive.
Thanks for the advice. I have a tendency to sit on stuff until it's practically obsolete. I mean, I still have an old Technics am fm stereo tuner from the 70s that was handed down to me. Damn I'm getting old.
Apologies if you already got it, but because I couldn't tell from your response - when they say "end of life," they meant that the hard drives will physically stop working and you'll have to pay a service to try to recover the data off of them. It's not a question of obsolescence necessarily.
Totally understandable, and honestly a good thing in many cases - there’s far too much ewaste and disposable junk out there for my tastes as it is!
@R3qn65 hit the nail on the head, though: the issue is that if a stereo tuner eventually gives up one day and never works again, it’s just time to buy a new one. When a hard drive does the same* it’s not just the physical drive that’s gone but all the data on it too.
Data recovery costs hundreds or thousands of dollars and sometimes even then just isn’t possible; good backups cost tens of dollars and are infinitely more reliable.
And yeah, may well be that you already know all this - my apologies if so, but hopefully it might still be helpful to someone else in that case!
*It is “when” not “if”, as well - I’ve got plenty that didn’t make it to double digit years. The type you have are mechanical and the parts just wear out eventually; SSDs also wear and fail, but in a very different way.
It's worth mentioning that there are plenty of cloud service providers that allow you to provide and control your own encryption key, effectively ensuring you're the only one who can access the content.
Of course you still lack control, you can't ensure the data isn't lost in a hardware failure, etc. So keeping a local backup is definitely the way to go for important data. But cloud doesn't have to be as scary as you think.
I think they refer to USB drivers which are "fake" and show to the system that they have more storage than they really do, but you'll only find those if you buy cheap drives that are obviously scams.
The worries they have are things they'll never encounter in the real world if they spend an hour or so doing research.
I know it’s not ideal for everyone, but I safely store my passwords in my head. Can’t hack my mind palace.
That suggests your passwords are low-entropy and/or non-unique. I encourage everyone to use randomly generated strings of 20+ chars, and never reuse any across different sites.
There are myriad ways to store passwords like that — I find a good password manager to be tremendously beneficial, but you could also keep them in a local encrypted file or even just handwritten in a paper notebook. Probably not in your head though. The important thing is that the passwords are created secure; how you keep track of them afterwards is a different matter.
I use xkpasswd style passwords memorised via the method of loci - I certainly wouldn't be reusing / using bad ones. Only forgotten a handful in the last five years or so.
That sounds reasonable. I could never do it but if it works for you who am I to judge? Glad you found a system you can manage.
I also store my data at home, no cloud. I run RAID5 on my NAS (DIY kind) to have some redundancy against losing the data and I have off-site backup on RAID1. I have both machines cnnected to internet but behind router wth careful port forwarding and private keys handsakes, no plain password or any of that stuff.
Same here. My girlfriend and I don't live together. I set up two machines that sync both our personal data over SSH and then make a backup of the mirrored copy. The benefit of syncing the full data rather than the backups is that both of us immediately have access to all data in case the other gets in an emergency.
Obviously, this scheme only works with someone you trust completely.
I have full control.over boh machines, they areboth headless and the backup one doesn't even have other users than me. The main inhouse one is actual NAS with home folder for all people on it.
I don't do full backups and I have a few reasons why:
I may think a bit more about syncing a bit more than photos, though. Thanks for the idea!