I’ve always heard that you folks like to keep tons of backups of your stuff. I have also heard that there is this 3-2-1 rule about keeping you backups. My question is: do you follow it personally or is it something that people just tell you to follow?
I use rclone with encryption via cloud and also endpoints backup.
Yes, I follow the 3-2-1 backup rule
1st copy is my working data
2nd copy is to an external HDD
3rd copy is offsite to a cloud siteMy backup copies are incremental, using a backup service (Arq)
I also have device backup, with my data auto-sync’d between devices (Mac and iPad)
The 2 in this rule isn’t clear: 2 different media?
Why is it important if it’s DVD & HDD or SSD & HDD?
For home use, it’s just two different devices that can be the same type, like harddrives in two servers, but not redundant data storage in one device, like RAID or just having two copies of files on the same drive. For corporate, most will probably interpret it as two different media types, like harddrive and tape. You want them seperate to prevent accidental deletion of files, ransomware and such.
Diversity in Failure Modes: Different storage media have different failure modes and life expectancies. For example, a hard disk drive (HDD) might be susceptible to mechanical failure, while a solid-state drive (SSD) might have limitations in terms of write cycles. By diversifying the media types, you reduce the risk that a single failure mode (like a power surge, mechanical wear, or temperature sensitivity) could compromise all of your backups.
Reducing Common Points of Failure: If all copies of your data are stored on the same type of device, they may all be vulnerable to the same type of failure. For example, if you have all your backups on different HDDs from the same manufacturer and there’s a manufacturing defect, all your backups could fail simultaneously.
Technology and Ageing: Different technologies age and become obsolete at different rates. By using multiple types of media, you’re less likely to find yourself in a situation where all your backups are stored on outdated or unsupported technology.
Physical and Environmental Threats: Different types of media have varying levels of resilience to physical and environmental threats like fire, water damage, magnetic interference, etc. By diversifying, you increase the chances that at least one of your backup mediums will survive a catastrophic event.
Data Recovery Options: In the event of a failure, different types of media may offer different data recovery options. Some media might be easier or more cost-effective to recover data from than others.
CSVs ftw
My music, photos, and documents are backed up remotely (Dropbox).
Everything else is just backed up to another machine.
For me it’s cost. 80tb wouldn’t be cheap enough for me.
#*POOF*
OK who rubbed the lamp? Of course I follow the rule religiously!
I follow it for the most critical data, other data get just one copy (but those data is not important to me)
I follow it personally, backup locally to a WD drive, and cloud is idrive
I’m a photographer with almost 25TB of photographs.
Primary storage: diy truenas On-site backup: off the shelf branded nas Off-site backup: cloud storage.
Just a note: any automated backup you need to be 100% sure you have set it up to not sync deletions.
I get down on my knees every month just to pray that I don’t need to use my back ups. Then, when the inevitable happens, I get down on my knees and pray thanks that I have my back ups.
More religious than anything else in my life. I have had numerous events occur over the past 2 decades and can confirm that restoring is so much easier and better than installing from scratch. Also data( in my case the usual pictures/movies/documents/etc) are at least duplicated on other media/devices/etc.
3-2-1 is the minimum I follow for anything important.
1 copy is the working data, 1 copy is a full system image stored on a NAS with incremental backups done nightly with Veeam, and 1 copy is on Backblaze B2 with incremental backups done nightly with Restic,
Not yet. My 2nd form of media will be Blu-ray 100GB Discs, and second location will probably be another house 30 minutes away. I DO have about 3-4 copies of my most important data.
Locally, I have RAID on my NAS, my sentimental stuff is mostly synced with other systems through seafile (similar to nextcloud), and is also backed up to backblaze.
For everything else, it’s just RAID.
I do main data at home, external HD as backup offsite (I update maybe 1-2x a year otherwise it’s turned off/unplugged), and any new files not on the backup are in cloud storage + local HD, separate from main data.
If either drive failed I’d just order a new one since the odds of both failing within a couple days would be low.
If by 3-2-1 you mean what I try to repeat to myself calmly when I lose my data, then yes
There are excellent articles that go over all this. Do a something search.
Bottom line, yes, you should at least do 3-2-1 methodology. More than that is gravy.