Do you back up your PC files?

[birdsnestfern]

If you back up your files on your pc, exactly what equipment and processes do you use?
Especially if you have a LOT of photos or files.

 

[Cognisant]

I use Google Drive and I mirror my important folders to an external SSD.

The likelihood of either backup becoming inaccessible or corrupted is extremely low, the likelihood of both going down at the same time is astronomically low.

 

[birdsnestfern]

ok, thanks. Will search for External SSDs.

 

[dr froyd]

of course, a hard drive can fail at any moment. The simple solution is an external hard disk. SSD is not particularly clever though, you can expect the data to disappear within a couple of years unless you plug it in regularly. And storing important/sensitive data in the cloud, especially at google.. well that's just straight up dumb

 

[EndogenousRebel]

I only keep the operating system and applications on an SSD.

For the most part everything else goes into HDDs.

Not because I'm afraid of digital information loss (although I have had a Seagate SSD suddenly die on me before), but it's just cheaper to have terabytes of hard drives.

I don't think MIcrosoft or Google is getting hacked any time soon, so I'd say that cloud storage with them is alright.

I should be mirroring my files to have backups, I will do that now lmao

 

[birdsnestfern]

Thanks! I have NEVER been able to backup files on any computer, I think because I used CD's or DVD's and it never saved everything and wasn't the right method. I probably won't use google, but I'm adding some SSD and HDD items to my wishlist.
Any of them with 5 Terrabytes or more would be about right I think.

 

[dr froyd]

I don't think MIcrosoft or Google is getting hacked any time soon, so I'd say that cloud storage with them is alright.

zero-day exploits probably exist for most things, it's just that a very extraordinary event must take place for them to be used, like international conflict or something.

but google getting hacked is just one part of the problem. First of all google themselves can use your data for their own purposes, and secondly you are vulnerable to getting your personal account hacked, man-in-the-middle attacks etc etc. That's a risk you take anytime you transmit and store data online.

put it on an HDD and suddenly you reduced the no. of people who can steal your data from the entire world to the ones willing to physically break into your home. If it's encrypted then not even that is a risk.

 

[birdsnestfern]

Appreciate that Dr. Froyd!

Here are the notes from the videos below:
Get two External HDD Hard drives and back up once a month to one, then the other the next month so you have two and they are continually being backed up regularly. Go to windows, settings (gear), update and security, then look on left panel for files backup, then click ADD a drive, then chose how often to backup (let it be automatic) and how often to save (forever). Then switch once a month or more often between the two external hard drives. Store one in the car and one in the house and use an offsite storage like microsoft but make it private. At least three places is best in different locations. But I agree about Google being hacked too easily, so the HDD seems the best option.

This guy was helpful too:

Try this HDD on amazon:​

WD 5TB Elements Portable HDD, External Hard Drive, USB 3.0 for PC & Mac, Plug and Play Ready - WDBU6Y0050BBK-WESN​

 

[ZenRaiden]

Its cheap, but you need to know how to install two HDD on computer.
If you already know how to do that its probably easy syncing them.
This is the tech term for it...

RAID - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Black Rose]

I don't think MIcrosoft or Google is getting hacked any time soon, so I'd say that cloud storage with them is alright.

zero-day exploits probably exist for most things, it's just that a very extraordinary event must take place for them to be used, like international conflict or something.

but google getting hacked is just one part of the problem. First of all google themselves can use your data for their own purposes, and secondly you are vulnerable to getting your personal account hacked, man-in-the-middle attacks etc etc. That's a risk you take anytime you transmit and store data online.

put it on an HDD and suddenly you reduced the no. of people who can steal your data from the entire world to the ones willing to physically break into your home. If it's encrypted then not even that is a risk.

The first thing to do is check all settings.
The second thing is to make at least three partitions.
Third, set up a recovery system.
Fourth make a list of all passwords on paper, keep it in a safe.
Fifth, make sure to use all safety log-in tools.

On Windows:

Create a Microsoft email.

On Google Chrome:

three main emails
one public
two backup

Your emails will always ask you if you logged in from your home device.

Your home device will not let you log in from other devices unless you specify the setup access privileges and codes.

 

[dr froyd]

well.. i just copy some files to an HDD now and then

it's good to diversify email though. Like, I don't use the same email account for netflix and my bank for example. If netflix gets hacked and my credentials are sold on the dark web, they'll have my netflix recommendations and a bunch of spam.

ive heard some people strongly recommending against writing down passwords on paper. Which to me doesn't make sense - it's sure as hell much better to have strong passwords written on paper than having a weak password that you remember and use everywhere. Once again, you limit the risk to people who can physically find it.

 

[Black Rose]

I accidentally deleted most of my files from my 1998 Windows computer.

I only had the hard drive (25 gigabytes) and I was able to recover them when I took the hard drive to Best Buy in 2016.

The files were on a flash drive 64 gigabytes but I started to think some were not worth keeping and started editing them in the flash drive folders and the flash drive was corrupted and only a few files survived.

In 2007 I had a flash drive (2 gigabytes) and someone borrowed it and it corrupted. I had a backup but only with 20% of the files.

Recently I had to remove Java because viruses were corrupting the "dot.java" extension programs.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

but google getting hacked is just one part of the problem. First of all google themselves can use your data for their own purposes, and secondly you are vulnerable to getting your personal account hacked, man-in-the-middle attacks etc etc. That's a risk you take anytime you transmit and store data online.

Fair enough.

If you care that much about privacy and need "cloud" storage you can host a server locally or through some service provider like digital ocean to access files remotely. It's probably cheaper anyways.

There are a lot of micro services that would make it easy for you to get started right away.

The technical skills you'd need are in like a 20 minute YouTube video.

 

[PeopleDoSuck]

This might interest you - LTT - Custom NAS - JONSBO N1 NAS Build

I haven't had time for it at the moment, but plan on putting something together cheap at some point.

It has redundancy, is easily accessible on your network across multiple operating systems, has built-in behind-the-scenes encryption and compression, can be accessed outside of your home network through a VPN, uses an open-source OS with no purchase price or subscription, and is fully upgradeable/repairable/customizable.

You can even add fiber connections, if you wish, with PCI express add-on cards. And it's probably best to use one of the newer 7000 series AMD CPUs with Fiber, since you can get a lightweight APU for video display and processing with as many cores and performance as you want (up to 16 high performance cores with DDR5 and more cache with the X3D chips). You can even do your research and find parts that support ECC to help protect against bits flipping from external radiation.

 

[sushi]

dont use usb, you will cry after you lost all the data.

 

[PeopleDoSuck]

<deleted>
...formatting messed up the post, wth, and I can't fix it. I'm bored, nevermind.

 

[PeopleDoSuck]

So you can get these parts - https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256...qYbWtd6D&utparam-url=scene:search|query_from:

It's an older Xeon processor with DDR4 RDIMM ECC for about 70 dollars. This seems like a really good combination for an at home nas. You do need a video card though, but just a cheap one that can do video processing would work. And if you want to max your transfer speeds, you probably need a 2.5gbit card, but this is a pretty awesome price.