Affordable and Safe Data Protection Practices?

cfreeze asks: "With the recent fire at the University of Twente, I started to think 'Are the steps I'm taking to backup my home network sufficient?'. The first thing going through my mind was the need to mail a set of recent backup discs to a family member. I feel this is a good first step, but due to the distances involved it may prove to be impractical. The second was a small hidden personal safe that is fireproof. What steps are you taking?" If you are interested in truly protecting your data, you have to realize that making backups is just a start. Next comes protecting those backups from floods, fires, and other catastrophes that might occur. What do you do to protect your backups?

Comments

How many buildings must burn

[Phronesis]

When I was in graduate school, I saw enough disasters (laboratory floods, thefts, etc.) that the watchword became, "How many buildings must burn down for me to lose my dissertation data?" Multiple complete backups in multiple distinct buildings, separated by large distances on the scale of a firebreak was the standard.

One fellow, who was paranoid about the permanence of magnetic media, even kept a copy of his raw data on punch cards (cartons of them).

Re:Three words:

[davidmcn]

Sure, they may not be insured, but odds are next to none that both the backup that you keep at your house, the current running version of things on your lan and your bank are ALL going to go the way of the dodo on the same day. And if your really concerned about that then keep 2 deposit boxes at different branches of your bank.

They make media fireproof boxes too...

[gosand]

but can the storage format your putting your data on stand up to the heat?

Oddly enough, I was just looking into these earlier today. They make media fireproof safes. Most of them I saw say that they will keep the internal temperature uner 125 degrees F, and under 80% humidity. 125 degrees is the melting point of most portable media. They seemed pretty costly, but if you are going to get a fireproof box, why not spend the extra $100 to get one that is media friendly? I saw some decent, albeit small, ones for around $250.

Well, since we're talking about home networks...

[Anthony Boyd]

...for my personal data, I just burn it to CDs every now & then, and then throw the CDs into the glove compartment of my car. Of course, I'm not backing up pr0n, so all my data fits onto 2 CDs, and since I've already got a few music CDs in the glove compartment, might as well drop the other CDs there too. My car is enough "off site" (I don't park in my house's garage) that the data will be fine if my house burns down. I've never had the summer heat bake the CDs into oblivion, they've always been fine. Low end, sure. But it's good enough for home use.

my home network back system

[bogie]

Basically my system is for the cheap and really lazy average user, but it still works fairly well. You'll need to spend some money, but that's just comes with the territory.

You need either a cdrom burner or tape drive on your server. You should be able to get a used 4/8GB DAT tape drive and scsi card off ebay for $100 max or a 48X burner for around $60. Then you'll need to get some 4/8 dat tapes which are dirt cheap at like $3-5 per tape, or some 50 packs of cdr discs which cost around $15. You'll of course need a hard drive big enough to store all your stuff, but considering you can get a 80GB one off pricewatch for under $100 that shouldn't be a problem. Also I personally use software RAID 1, which is nice, but if your short on funds you can do without it.

Basically on your server either linux or windows 2000, you have two shares or volumes dedicated just to your data. One is your read-only permenant share of mp3's,docs and crap you've downloaded. This share is readonly as an extra precaution. You can just pull what you need off it and copy it to your temp share if the file has been changed and needs to be backed up. The other is a read/write "temp" share which besides being a area to store New data you've downloaded, is for files you've worked on from your readonly share and as a result now need to be backed up. After they are backed up, you will then move them back to the readonly share.

On the temp share you will be using a quota system that should come with your OS. You will set this quote for say 650MB for cdrbackup and say 3.75GB if your backing up to a 4/8GB tape drive.

Now what this system does is stops the most common problem for backups. Since most people A) don't remember to backup and B) just stuff file after file on their server, is stop them cold if they exceed their temp storage space, which now is the same exact size as their backup media. At that point you HAVE to backup, and then you can move those files to your read-only share for further safe keeping. I constantly see people who put off backing up and then realize they have 25 GB that need to be backup up to Cdr. One additional step which although like RAID 1 most people won't due, is to make 2 copies everytime you backup. This is actually really easy and it then allows you to keep one set of backups offsite and one onsite. Offsite can be anywhere, that isn't in your same dwelling.

This system isn't one I would ever use at a client, but it works well enough, is cheap, and doesn't let the user's datasize grow widly unless they override the quota, which at that point nothing can help them.

Hopes this helps.