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Comment by cortesoft | Hacker News Reader

I agree with the offsite backups, but I find it to be impractical for a lot of my data.

I have over 8TB of data at my house, and getting that backed up offsite is not trivial.

Then perhaps back up the <10 Gb of stuff that would really screw you up if you lose it. For example, I keep all my bank account info, passwords, personal documents on an encrypted hardrive and I further encrypt the files. I keep this off site at a friends house which I can SSH into and transfer what ever I need.

Two 4TB Ext USB3 HD's and a Safety Deposit box at your Bank. Cheap, more or less convenient (get four drives and rotate your backup drives), and secure.

Easier yet if you can pair the amount of crucial stuff to under 4TB, then it's just one drive that you can rotate monthly (weekly?).

WTF 8TB? Are you a movie editor or something? Anyway, I'm sure you don't change 8TB of data regularly. Back up the 7,9TB which is stale on a physical media you store at your parents', then set up online sync for anything new you produce or change.

How little "offsite" can one get away with? Could you put a waterproof (flooding), fireproof, buried (tornadoes) safe with a NAS (SSDs for earthquake protection?) in the barn in your yard? It would be easy to run Ethernet to that and have fully synced backups without ISP/cloud service charges.

What natural disasters/events will take out both your home and the hardened safe in your barn?

edit: An EMP may fit the bill. :-O

One problem with "fireproof" is that a safe that will protect paper records against combustion (by shielding them from the most intense heat and preventing oxygen from entering) will almost certainly get hot enough to melt plastics and render magnetic storage damaged if not unreadable.

One of the characteristics of fireproof safes is also their ability to withstand a multi-story drop. The reason being that when the floor burns out from under it, that's what happens. This still doesn't do much to ensure data records are retained.

So long as it's a barn in the yard, reasonably directional WiFi might well suffice.

As for what natural disasters could take out your house and your barn: if you live in wildfire country, that's a distinct possible risk. As a random Google Image search example:

http://www.mesonet.ttu.edu/cases/PitchforkFire_050811/201105...

Note the plot of 20cm depth soil temperature rise (and how long the temps stay elevated):

http://www.mesonet.ttu.edu/cases/PitchforkFire_050811/meteo_...

Not always. Fireproof safes are rated for paper, tape or drives, as well as a time limit. A safe rated for drives will guaranteed a maximum of 55 degrees (C) inside it for the rated time, enough for drives to survive without problem when powered down.

See: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/02/setting_the_iosafe_2...

Fair enough. Much of my experience is pretty dated, to the beginning of the time that data storage was a major concern (and much of the data of the time would do just fine in a paper-rated safe).

You do raise the point that fire ratings are for specific time limits: X minutes at Y temperature.

Another key point (my long-ago sources informed me) is that one of the most important things to do after the fire is to NOT OPEN THE SAFE (this applied to paper storage, inquire with your vendor / manufacturer for data).

The same properties which make a safe proof against fire damage mean that it retains heat once applied to it for a considerable period. Apparently it's not uncommon for people to employ a fireproof safe, secure their papers and documents within it, have the safe and documents survive the fire ... and then spontaneously combust when fresh oxygen is introduced on opening to the still-blazing-hot interior.

The issue there isn't that something unlikely will happen physically, such as an EMP, the issue is that a virus could take out it out at the same time as it hits your main machine, thanks to that ethernet cable.

Make the safe a Faraday cage.

That's crazy. After 25 years, all I have is a 32Gb USB stick.

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