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Comment by lazyjones | Hacker News Reader

Even if you are a minimalist, one of the few things you should have if you have something non-negligible to lose, is a safe. Most thieves don't bother touching one if it looks sturdy and a good one will withstand fires, so that's where you can keep regular backups.

If you don't want one, building a tiny backup PC to hide somewhere (in the attic with WiFi etc.) is also feasible nowdays when you can get 1TB mSATA drives.

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A NAS is my preferred choice, over a PC. Smaller than most any PC I could cobble together, lower power, quieter, unassuming. They even make WiFi-equipped models.

Which just made me think of something- if you are concerned about network security and isolating your backups, what's to stop you from keeping the NAS unconnected to your WLAN, and at time of archival, explicitly establishing P2P WiFi connections with the NAS from the client PC...

Nothing, but there are more paranoid and more easily implemented systems that you could use instead if you want easy, but air-gapped backups.

You can even buy a fire-resistant safe with USB connectivity, so you can leave an external hard drive in the safe and still back up to it regularly. The ones I've seen are still pretty pricey (~$500), but they avoid the potential for "I remembered to back up, but I forgot to lock the drive back in the safe, and then the house burned down".

Most document safes are rated to keep paper intact for a limited time, when exposed to house-fire temperatures and wattages. Make sure when you buy a fire safe that it is 'media rated', not all of them are, and the internal temp of an ordinary fire safe will melt cds and backup tapes.

Only if the safe is properly secured. Thieves are more than willing to carry a safe away if they can.

Bolting to the floor/wall is a must.

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