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Data Safety In a Time of Natural Disasters
CowboyRobot writes "The National Weather Service has begun testing the way it labels natural disasters. It's hoping that the new warnings, which include words like 'catastrophic,' 'complete devastation likely,' and 'unsurvivable,' will make people more likely to take action to save their lives. But what about their digital lives? Recommendations include: Keep all electronics out of basements and off the floor; Unplug your hardware; Buy a surge protector; Enclose anything valuable in plastic. If the National Weather Service issued a 'complete devastation' warning today, would your data be ready?"
Cloud storage. Imagine how much data you can store in a hurricane!
Encrypt your stuff, send to a friend elsewhere in the world. He can likewise encrypt his stuff and send to you. Doesn't even need any fancy cryptographic stuff - even the non-techies can set a password on a winrar archive, and winrar's crypto is sufficiently hard to break that the only way I've ever found is to brute-force the password - which still is very slow, due to the use of a multi-round hardened hash.
If I am not going to survive, I won't be around to care if my data does or not.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
If I had to physically escape with my data, it would take less than a minute. Pull off the side-panel to my case. Unplug my HDDs and pull the cage they're attached to. Toss that into a bag, or if time wasn't critical, look into safer solutions like anti-static bags or at least a freezer ziplock or something.
Anything else in the system is easily replaceable in a disaster.
http://www.pelican-case.com/ If you break it they replace it. They are awesome and water proof cases. Just build you system inside, something happens, close the door. Done.
... try not building your house in an area prone to hurricanes. Or, if you're going to do that, try not living in a house constructed along the same basic design as a plywood packing crate.
Most of the houses in the US would simply not be passed as fit for human habitation in the UK, because of their shoddy thin-crappy-wood-over-thin-crappy-frame construction.
''catastrophic,' 'complete devastation likely,' and 'unsurvivable,'" I think these words accurately describe the effect that their new, scary vocabulary choices will have on their credibility. Really, no matter how dramatic your warning is, some people are just going to think they can tough it out - has far more to do with the temperament of the person than with specific verbiage. Getting all hysterical might motivate a few more people in the short term, but long run it makes you look silly and might even lead otherwise sensible people to ignore your warnings.
Not true. After Ike, most of the damaged computers I saw were from 3-6 inches of water. A few more were from small leaks, or blown wind. Plastic trash bags, and setting them on the desk would have saved almost all of them. Other than the one company that bagged all the computers and put them together on the same table in the middle of the room. The roof collapsed partially there, knocking them all off the table. :) Sometimes you're the windshield, and sometimes you're the bug...