Back it up!

As we move forth toward being truly a paperless society we are increasingly dependent on having our data on our computers, on the internet and in our devices to be accessible whenever we need them to be. We also need them to be secure and safe from data thieves and from loss. I'm not talking about having a couple of folders on your PC or a few images on your phone, with the amount of data we generate every year this is definitely not enough.

So how can one go about this? For starters, a simple external USB drive can be had for a bargain from Amazon, Newegg or Ebay. There are also many cloud services one can avail for storage, there's Google drive, iDrive, Dropbox, etc. There is also software, most of you may already have in your PC or Mac, you can use to automate backing up your data.

Buying an external USB drive is straightforward. Determine the storage size you need and choose between a number of different form factors that will work for you. Just make sure you buy a reputable brand from a reputable store. When it comes to cloud services, depending on the size of the data you need saved, you may get away with the free tier using one of the services mentioned above, but as your data grows(and it will), so will your storage requirements. You may want to opt for more than one solution to stay with the free tier. This solution comes with its own complications. Alas, things are not so simple anymore.

I learned the hard way when I thought having only one backup was enough. I was running an instance of OpenMediaVault with 4tb of disk storage one one single hard drive. I thought I was golden as I was only using up 1.2tb of space so I created backups for my filesystems.. on the same drive! Big mistake. Long story short my drive eventually failed and I almost lost all my data. What's important is that we create some form of redundancy.

A Youtuber I follow, Jeff Geerling, suggests to follow the rule of three when it comes to storage solutions. It means having 3 instances of your data (at least the way I understood it). Two on site (or in your home) and one remote - which makes sense to me. Redundancy is key to prevent loss of your data and downtime to your services. Today, for my home solution, I run OMV on 2 computers at home. One on an old desktop and one on a raspberry pi. I have a total of 20tb of disk space but can only use up to 8tb. For offsite backup I have iDrive. I know this is far from the perfect set up but it's a start.

Having to retrieve your data is no fun and at the very least a hassle. I hope this helped you thresh out the issues you're having, good luck!

links:

Hard disk drive: https://amzn.to/3Vyh2oy

Disk Cleaner : https://amzn.to/3C7ze1D