Comments on: How is that false sense of security working for you?

By: name

name — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:34:49 +0000

Online backup is a must. But, it’s not the only thing you can rely on. Online storage can fail, be inaccessible, or go under (as many services have failed and closed their doors in recent years).

A good backup plan should consist of:
1) Local hard drive and external backup
2) CD or DVD of key photos
3) Print (professionally) photos. At 10 cents a piece in some places, photo prints are the safest way to backup your photos. Paper prints can’t succomb to digital file errors or lossless jpeg errors (i.e., your digital photos can and do deteriorate over time).
4) Online backup with several services, perhaps one paid service plus a few free services.
5) Offsite backup. Keep a CD or some digital photos at the office, at a relatives, or at a friends house.

By: David

David — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 04:10:45 +0000

I’d like to know more about fire ratings and digital media. The ratings I’m looking at are for 1800 degrees–for one or more hours, and with all six sides of the enclosure exposed. I don’t know about your house, but my house doesn’t have enough material to fuel a marshmallow roast for two hours, let alone sustain 1800 degrees for any length of time.
I understand being paranoid, and better safe than sorry, but isn’t putting your USB drive in a waterproof case (Pelican, for example) in a 2 hour firesafe, bolted to the concrete slab in your basement reasonable protection? What kind of fire would be required to subject the floor of a basement to the kind of heat that would damage a drive inside a normal firesafe?

From UL:
http://www.ul.com/fire/safes.html
The 125 rating is for ‘flexible computer disks’ which I read as floppies. 150 is the rating for magnetic tape. I’m guessing the UL hasn’t updated the spec in a while, if they’re still rating floppies–so they probably don’t have a rating for external drives?

By: Emma

Emma — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:55:02 +0000

I take a huge amount of photos, these are stored on an external networked drive at home. I think there’s about 130GB of stuff on there at the moment.

A few months ago we gave an old hard drive to my Mum and Dad with the condition they kept all my old pics safe. Reading this I get the feeling that data needs updating. Photos of my son couldn’t be replaced in case of a fire. I must get onto that.

By: Mark - Productivity501

Mark - Productivity501 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 03:29:22 +0000

JungleDisk is an online backup tool that runs on Amazon’s S3 service. It is a bit on the technical side to setup, but you can back up very large amounts of data without a lot of expense.

I keep a copy of my really important files on a DVD in the bank lockbox. It only gets updated a couple times each year, but it gives me one other option if data is lost.

By: Louisa

Louisa — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 06:08:54 +0000

I absolutely love Mozy for online backup service! Sooooo cheap (free in some cases, like mine!) and great customer service.

By: Fazal Majid

Fazal Majid — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 05:43:23 +0000

@Sara: Sentry and Maxtor have come up with a fireproof safe with a built-in drive:
http://www.ohgizmo.com/2007/11.....rd-drives/

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:16:25 +0000

I don’t really trust my bits to them thar online interwebs. Seems like an easy target for 1337 haX0rs or incompetent employees (like when you read about 1000′s of personal records get stolen because some company employee had their laptop stolen, etc.).

Call me old fashioned, but I’ll be keeping my hard drive safe under my mattress.

By: Mary Anne

Mary Anne — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:13:12 +0000

I could not agree more with the importance of this … 11 months ago, an error made by a city employee resulted in several thousand gallons of water flooding every inch of my home. My computer and external USB hard drive didn’t get wet, but the water was high enough that the dangling power cords shorted out, and it was touch and go whether I’d be able to get anything off the devices. Even in the face of all the massive repairs I was facing, one of the most upsetting things was that every picture I’d taken over the previous year was on the external hard drive and was NOT backed up since I didn’t have a working CD burner. Fortunately, when I purchased new power cords, the computer and hard drive themselves were functional, but it was a real eye-opener. Carpet and furniture can be replaced, but pictures from my one-one-one trip with my 6-year old niece can’t.

By: Erin Doland

Erin Doland — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:01:52 +0000

@Sara — Fireproof boxes won’t protect your data storage unless they have a UL rating of 125 for digital media. Starting prices for small safes at this rating are usually in the thousands. Check out this post for more information on this subject:

http://unclutterer.com/2007/08.....-part-two/

By: Sara

Sara — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:57:01 +0000

Couldn’t you just put your back up in a fire/flood-proof box, like the one where you (well at least I) keep important stuff like family records and jewlery?

By: sue b

sue b — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 06:11:13 +0000

Actually, the easiest (and cheapest) method is still burning all your data off to DVD’s and mailing or carrying them to a friend’s or relative’s home. Everytime I fly home to my mom and dad’s I make a DVD of all the data and take it with me. Mom knows where I keep it and with US post office express mail for $15 bucks I can have it back in my hands in 48 hours (this is the earthquake, tornado scenario.) I always end up needing some files or photos on the road anyway. Or you can swap disaster DVD kits with a local friend for the house fire, burglery concern. You are going to ask somebody to watch your place when you take a trip, ask them to watch your data. And return the favor.

By: dizawndra

dizawndra — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 02:40:33 +0000

I dunno, in a fire, I might say that I have bigger worries than where my clients documents are. But yes, offsite storage seems like a good idea. How burying the external back ups in the backyard? (bubble wrapped of course)

By: Fazal Majid

Fazal Majid — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 02:37:56 +0000

The problem with USB-SATA cables is that the drive does not get proper cooling, and will likely overheat and malfunction if you are backing up serious amounts of data.

I would recommend instead the D-Link DNS-323 NAS, that can take up to 2 SATA drives. If you know a thing or two about Linux, you can download Fun-Plug and extend it to do incremental network backups to an offsite sibling using rsync while you are sleeping.

I documented my own scheme, which goes a few steps beyond because I am paranoid and can afford it:
http://www.majid.info/mylos/we...../10-1.html

By: spaceboyzoom

spaceboyzoom — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:26:14 +0000

The lower end external drive is significantly cheaper than the one linked in the original post.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obi.....tterer-20/

By: Arf

Arf — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:56:19 +0000

Mozy is fantastic. All files are encrypted and can be accessed anywhere, and you can store up to 2GB for free. It also lets you go back up to 30 days and retrieve old or deleted files. It's much less cluttered than any kind of hard drive, too!