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

the safe may be fireproof

[phliver]

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

Re:the safe may be fireproof

[ChazeFroy]

The submitter of this story should take a look at the ISO 17799 standard (formerly the British Standard 7799) for data security.

As for backups, best practices suggests that you keep one on site and one off site. The off site location should be at least 6.5 miles from the site. This distance was calculated throughout the years as insurance companies assessed damage caused by widespread natural disasters (hurricanes, floods) and the area that was impacted by them.

Three words:

[cje]

Safety deposit box.

Your bank should make these available to you for next to nothing, and you don't have to worry about buying your own safe and making sure that it's secure, fireproof, etc.

Re:Three words:

[tjanofsky]

While it may be safer than your house, keep in mind that banks usually do not insure safety deposit boxes, and they are often not liable if the box is destroyed (e.g., at the WTC).

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.

Re:Three words:

[BlueUnderwear]

keep in mind that banks usually do not insure safety deposit boxes,

The idea is to keep two sets of backups: one onsite (i.e. at home), and another one at a remote location (i.e. at the bank).

Even if the contents is not insured (what's the monetary value of your personal data anyways?), the probability that something happens both to your home and to your bank is quite slim.

Re:Three words:

[Skjellifetti]

The one problem you might have is if you die and your SO needs to get at the backups for some reason. Many (most) states require that the box be sealed on the death of one of the owners until the probate stuff is straightened out. This is the reason why you should not keep your will in your safety deposit box. Let the attorney keep it for you.

Of course, having said all that, I'll admit that I back up my data to CDR and put the CD in the safety deposit box at the bank. The one thing those backups contain that might cause a problem for my wife is the MS Money backup.

Re:Three words:

[YrWrstNtmr]

This is the reason why you should not keep your will in your safety deposit box.

There is usually a provision for 'Will discovery'. One family member, usually the proposed executor/administrator, is allowed to go into the box to look for and retrieve the will. Life insurance policies as well. Nothing else may be removed, though, until after probate.
IANAL, but I just had to go through this procedure.

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).

What do you do to protect your backups?

[GMontag]

What do you do to protect your backups?

I use the squirrel method, hiding my data on the drives of unsuspecting dupes all over the internet.

Unfortunately, I can't remember where all of these bits are, so if my primary system gets messed up I am going to be dataless :(

Fire at the University of Twente

[Slycee]

That's nothing compared to what happened to the Univeristy of One through the University of Nineteen. Let's hope they realize their mistakes with the release of the University of Twente-One

Don't forget...

[puppetman]

just because you have a backup, doesn't mean it works.

We were backing up our Oracle database with the export-utility, and DIRECT=Y flag. Well, unfortunately, sometimes a direct backup is corrupted (a direct backup bypasses all the SQL parsing, and unloads it directy from the tablespace).

Now we restore our backups every few weeks to our development databases, to make sure they are working.

rsync with cp -al

[gambitdis]

We have just created a new policy of backing up to a remote location using rsync and cp -al. Basically we do an rsync then daily copies on the backup machine using hard links. There is a very good introduction here.

We're doing this in an enterprise environment, but it would be easy to co-ordinate between two friends as well.

--derek

gambitdesign.com

Use Kazza to make backups..

[Anonymous Coward]

Pad your data into some porn movie and you will have loads of copies floated around the internet.

Make sure your backup methodology is good to start

[Sheetrock]

First, you have to make sure your backup method isn't prone to mistakes. One setup I had to clean up involved reusing the same three backup tapes for god knows how long (about one file in three was properly restorable) and was missing perhaps the three most important datafiles on the system because they happened to be in use during the backup and the guy that set it up didn't realize that was a problem.

Right now, CD-Rs (not -RWs) seem to be a great way to store moderate amounts of data. -RWs suffer from degradation pretty quickly despite their rewriteability (I've never seen one live up to the '1000 writes' standard they claim -- more like 3-7). For larger amounts, DVD-R may be the wave of the future, but high-quality tapes are probably as good if you can persuade your boss to let you replace them from year to year.

Periodically, it's important to store your backups offsite. A safe-deposit box works well, or perhaps a fireproof safe if you're worried about the confidentialness of your information. But yeah, I'd move that stuff offsite biweekly or monthly at a minimum.

where are my mod points when I need them...

[MarcoAtWork]

mod parent up: a while ago I was thinking about getting a fireproof safe for my own backups, but fireproof (as defined by manufacturers) doesn't really mean 'compatible with magnetic media', since an inside temperature that doesn't make paper burn and/or plastic liquefy, is still a temperature that will probably cook your cdr dye and/or play havoc with other magnetic media.

I found that there were safes that were guaranteed to keep the inside at a temperature compatible with storage media, but their prices were not as affordable (obviously).

Re:where are my mod points when I need them...

[Waffle Iron]

since an inside temperature that doesn't make paper burn and/or plastic liquefy, is still a temperature that will probably cook your cdr dye and/or play havoc with other magnetic media.

Not to mention that the walls of fireproof safes are usually filled with moisture-retaining material. That helps with fires, but the humidity inside the safe is always high. Over time, that could degrade the plastic and metal parts of any digital media stored inside even without a fire.

pr0n!!!!

[forged]

no one cares about pr0n anyway ... or do they?

You're new around here, aren't you?

If you haven't restored, you haven't backed up.

[Nkwe]

Make sure that whatever you do, you have tested your restore process and done so recently. A backup that can't be read is actually worse then no backup at all. If you have no backup then you don't have the comfy feeling of thinking you have a backup.

When you test your restore, be sure you test it on a machine and tape drive other then the one you used to create the backup. Tape drives easily fall out of alignment. An out of alignment tape drive will generate an out of alignment tape. A mis-aligned tape may work fine in the drive that created it, but may not be readable on any other tape drive. This does you no good if the only tape drive that can read the tape is in a melted ruin.

If you are in a Microsoft network environment or any other environment that uses a central security or configuration database, (domain controller, directory server, etc.) don't forget to have a backup plan for that as well. Recovering the data is only part of the battle; you also have to recover the logins, security rights, and all other configuration aspects of your network.

Did you remember to store a copy of the install media and license codes for your backup software at your off-site location along with your backup media? How about written copies of your hardware and software configurations?

As others have noted, a safe-deposit box at a bank not too physically close to your computers is an economical option. I use this option for my home network. A down side to this is you can only get to your backup media during the bank's operating hours. If you need better access, a professional off-site storage company may be a better option. Many will pick up, deliver, and manage rotations for you.

Finally, don't forget that there are other things then fire and flood and natural disasters that can keep you from your physical equipment. Your data may be safe on your servers, but you might not be able to get to your servers if there is a chemical spill, civil unrest, or some other police action happening between you and your equipment.

perfect solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

1) when placing your media in the fireproof safe pack so that it'd survive a good fall.

2) put the fireproof safe in a blasting shell of sorts surrounded by some explosives with a high ignition temp...

3) you're done! when the fire engulfs the shell your safe is in, the safe itself will be shot outside... your media/backups will be safe & unmelted!

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.

Re:Connected.com rules

[CodeWheeney]

Unfortunately, the poster of this Ask Slashdot question is the CEO of Connected.com.

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.