Ask HN: Best Storage for Large Personal Backups?

2 points·workfromspace··5 comments

I currently use iCloud for my 1TB of personal photos and videos but lack a physical backup.

What storage solutions (brand, model, configuration) do you recommend?

Previously, I used https://freefilesync.org/ to sync my digital life to external USB storage (now I use an equivalent script that's even more hands-free).

I recommend two drives (or more) of which one is always off-site, ideally not in a car due to extreme temperatures.

Of course, all drives should be encrypted with a strong key (use whatever suits you and your OS: File Vault, Bitlocker, VeraCrypt, LUKS, etc.). Encryption should be done in a way that the drive can be decrypted on a freshly bought computer if needed.

Depending on how much data loss you can accept, you can run a physical back-up weekly, monthly, quarterly, whatever suits you, just set a reminder in your calendar.

1 TB is not a lot, so the answer is probably snapshots to an external hard drive. Together with cloud backups, you have 3 copies of the data on different media and in different locations, which is very robust.

10x that amount and maybe you can start thinking about tape.

Thank you for the answers so far. However I wanted to ask which specific disk brand and models you are using or recommending.

It's advantageous to use different brands to protect e.g. against firmware bugs.

You also might want to check https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q2-...

Thank you. I never thought of firmware failures.

And this website looks very useful, since my biggest concern is durability of the disk.

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