What do people use for a shelf-stable backup
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If it's powered off, you'll have no idea when it dies. And they do die just sitting there.
I've actually had more failures of drives sitting around than ones running constantly.
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Cloud can be surprisingly cost effective, as part of a 3-2-1 backup.
Check out storj.io
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But I will because it won't work the next time I take it home to sync. The chance that it'll fail during the few months between a sync and an emergency is incredibly low.
I wouldn't leave it on a shelf for years, just a few months at a time (approximately quarterly).
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Exactly. I have a document for my SO that describes what to do if I pass (where the money is, how the WiFi is set up, various important accounts, etc). It's not a will (nothing about who gets what, though that's assumed by the state to be my SO, or my kids equally if we pass together), just a document that explains the stuff I handle.
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I have such a document, but it's not quite the same. I'm just as worried about my dumb ass losing the borg key and all data along with it...
I'm thinking a clearly labelled hard drive with instructions, rotating the hard drive with a new one every 5 years or so.
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I have a cloud backup, so this isn't about a critical loss of data. It's about an accessible copy that isn't encrypted and a layman could get the data off.
If my house burns down and I lose the copy, I can restore the data from the cloud backup (so long as I'm not in the house when it burns).
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Yeah I am thinking of getting a couple of drives and cloning across both. Update both at the same time. I didn't think of getting two drives at different times but that makes sense, thanks for the suggestion!
I am thinking printouts is a good idea too. I might get a big container, and keep a couple of mirrored drives as well as say 100 photos from each year. Every year I update the drives with additions and then print 100 photos from the previous year to add to the collection.
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Yeah I think I should do something like this. I really want to make sure the files are not getting corrupted in storage without me knowing.
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Just a hdd in usb caddy? IMHO good enough for 4 tier backup.
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exFAT is a newer and viable alternative to FAT32, with better size limits and some pretty good cross-platform capabilities. That said, if your primary access is through Windows, NTFS may have some better features and is at least read-only on other platforms.
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This is why I canāt/donāt have a lot of the ābest practicesā in my family archive. Iām not encrypting local drives, Iām not using BTRFS, or a ZFS pool. If I did Iād have to ensure my Will provided for the lawyer to hire a tech shop to help recover them. No, exFAT and NTFS, in the clear so those left behind can just plug them in and get to making their own copies. Otherwise the archive would die with me.
Does that mean someone could steal my drives and go through my family photos? Sure. I hope it brings them much guilt, something a garbled encrypted drive could never do.
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I personally prefer printed out books of our photos. We are missing quite a few years due to life getting in the way, but the end goal is to have actual books of photos with titles like 'Our family in 2018' and 'Sports of our first born at 2022'. In europe we have a company called 'ifolor' where you can design and order printouts of your photos. They're not really cheap, but the quality is pretty damn good. And their offerings go to pretty decent sized photo albums, up to A3 size and 180 pages (which is over 200ā¬). So, not cheap, but at least so far their quality has been worth the money.
And they have cheaper options too, but personally I think it's worth the money to get the best quality you can for printouts. And even the smallest and cheapest option is far superior over not having anything at all due to hardware failure or whatever.
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I don't use Windows, I'm just thinking of someone needing to be able to pick up and use a drive, and for most people it's going to be Windows.
Maybe I just need to leave instructions that specify it needs to be my laptop they use to get the photos off.
