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Comment by roasm | Hacker News Reader

I back up to a local external drive, and also to BackBlaze. External drives are so cheap these days that the ease of handling your restore yourself is worth it to me. BackBlaze is just an offsite back up so when the house is burning down, I can grab the kids instead of pictures of the kids.

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My alternative: buy 2+ external drives and a fire/water proof box. Keep one drive unplugged and in the box when not backing up. Keep other n-1 drives elsewhere and swap with the local occasionally.

I have one at work, and another at my parent's house, more than 100 miles away. In case of a literal blaze and/or high water, even the local drive should be fine. If all drives are gone from a single catastrophe, I figure I (and everyone else) have more serious things to worry about, like what's for dinner.

>> I have one at work, and another at my parent's house, more than 100 miles away.

How often can you swap them?

As much as I want. I usually swap the work one about every week or two; parent's house is a few months.

Most fireproof boxes are not actually fireproof. In many fires they will just turn into an oven that bakes whatever is inside.

That's what I do. I've got local Time Machine backups (which I have restored from in the past). So far I just haven't had to use my Backblaze backups but I think I'll test that this weekend.

It should take you less than 20 seconds. Here is the procedure. First sign in here:

https://secure.backblaze.com/user_signin.htm type your username, password, and click "Sign In", then....

Look on the left nave for "View/Restore Files", browse to one file you know you changed recently, and check the checkbox by it (and maybe a few other files) and click "Continue With Restore". Done!

Within a few seconds you can go to "My Restores" (on the left side of the web browser) to download the restore!

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