[geeks] Cheap/reliable backup?

[Doug McLaren]

On Mon, Dec 02, 2013 at 01:26:46PM -0500, Mouse wrote:

| There are three purposes I've identified that backups serve:

It's good to list these, to make them explicit.  Some people haven't
considered all of these -- the extreme case being "I use raid 1 -- I
don't need backups" (when the reality is, they've only covered #3, and
even that's not covered completely.)
 
| (1) Mistake recovery: "Oops, I didn't mean to delete that."
| (2) Historical queries: "This worked last May, what was here then?"
| (3) Failure recovery: "Oh $h1+, the disk just died."

There's one more:

(4) Disaster recovery: "Crud, my house just burned down."
   "Somebody broke into my house and took everything!"
   "The NSA just came and took all my drives!"

| Some mechanisms are better suited to one than another; for example,
| my own backup system is tuned for dealing (3) - it doesn't even try
| to address (1) or (2).  (It could be modified a bit to handle them.)

Yup.  Backing up to an external hard disk or tape drive that you keep
on top of your computer does wonders for #1 and #3, but does little to
address #4.  But keeping your backup drive hidden in the attic or
swapping it out with a drive in a safe deposit box might address
certain types of #4 (and not others.)

In any event, it's helpful to list the problems you're protecting
against (which you've done) and compare your proposed system to the
problems.

-- 
Doug McLaren, dougmc at frenzied.us