How many times has Windows or Android warn you, that you're running out of space? How many times have you just opted to delete the Downloads folder because that's most likely to not contain important information (to only find out 2 months later, it did!), because your whole file system is a disorganized black-hole?
After a year of personal research, I present to you:
My *nix brethren, how many times have you run `du` to find out what to delete to free up space?
What if I told you, that with ~$200 and ~$60/yr, you can save all your cherished memories, and not worry (too much) about storage space again?
After a year of personal research, I present to you:
The 3-2-1 rule, dual SATA dock, mirroring and a sane organization scheme.
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| You just wire your thingmajig to a cloud, easy peasy! |
The 3-2-1 Rule
The rule is simple: you have 3 backup sources: 2 are local, and 1 is remote.
2 local sources because if one fails, you can replace it and duplicate the good one over the new one.
1 remote source because if both fail, or become destroyed or stolen, your remote source can restore 2 new local sources.
2 local sources because if one fails, you can replace it and duplicate the good one over the new one.
1 remote source because if both fail, or become destroyed or stolen, your remote source can restore 2 new local sources.
A lot of people will reach for a NAS solution or similar, but I'm here to offer a just as simple and cheap solution.
Get 2 storage devices
Essentially you'll want to find yourself a dual SATA bay/dock. These devices allow you to plugin hard-drives externally, and they'll appear as their respective drives. They are pretty cheap; mine only cost $40.
Next you'll want to buy two of the same sized hard-drives. Some will argue to get two different branded ones to avoid failures which both same drives would have. But we're mortals, we don't care about these details: just buy 2 same sized drives.
What size should you buy? That heavily depends on your budget and needs. If you're doing heavy media work, you'll probably want +5TB drives. Since I only care about personal , 2TB should be good enough for me.
If you're really frugal, you can use 2 or more USB drives with a USB hub.
Where you get these devices is up to you. I got mine from Amazon, but I'm sure there are other, better sellers out there.
Get 1 storage provider
You should choose a storage provider which can match your local storage needs. Everyone I've asked recommends BackBlaze. If you haven't heard of them, they're the go-to for archival storage needs, and do a yearly hard-drive analysis write-up. From what I gather, they're a pretty good storage provider. At $60/yr, that's 1 new hard-drive per year, which I think is fair.
Here's my referral link if you plan to sign up; I'd really appreciate it if you used it.
https://secure.backblaze.com/r/00v49x
Put them together now
Once everything is bought, and hard-drives plugged into the drive bay, you'll need to configure the setup.
Mirroring
Create a mirrored drive. Use a search engine to find the documentation for this, and for how to do it on other operating systems. On Windows, if you go to "storage spaces" in the control panel, you should be good to go if you follow what it says.
A mirrored drive is best for backups because if any data becomes corrupt in one, the other can restore it; it's maximum redundancy.
Now when you write to the drives, the data is mirrored between both of them. You can even mount one without the other if one fails completely as a normal drive!
Synchronizing
This part is totally up to the provider you choose. Your setup with your provider should be configured such that whenever your backup is written to, it's also uploaded to your provider. BackBlaze has their own application for this which works great.
Encryption
Now you might ask, "what about encrypting my files?"
There's an issue when you choose to encrypt backups: if data becomes corrupted, it's hard to recover anything without a copy. In the event both parts of your backups fail, you can still use tools to recover pieces of data and reconstruct files. If your files are encrypted, this is not possible anymore.
What I suggest is encrypt on a per-file basis. If you have a bunch of files which need to be encrypted, put them into an archive and encrypt that. This way you get best of both world: you encrypt your important documents, and leave everything else as-is.
File organization
Once everything is setup, you can begin backing up your things in an organized way. The following scheme is what I've developed from research and personal use; it feels very natural, yet not too narrow or wide. The folders are:
- Audio
- Documents
- Name
- 2017
- 2018
- 2019
- 2020
- Taxes
- Files
- Files go here
- Moments
- Camera
- Desktop
- Internet
- Mobile
- 2019
- A bunch of files
- 2020
- Undated
- Video
And so on. You get the idea: combine generic categories with not-too-specific dates, and you should have a nice-to-navigate file-system!
Voila!
You've successfully setup a personal, reliable backup system! Take joy in knowing your information is safe probably until the day you die! Clear those devices of media and garbage!
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