Offsite backups for the rest of us?

[Robert Brockway]

On Mon, 11 Apr 2005, Walter Dnes wrote:

>   I'm not a company, or a consultant, just a guy with a computer.
> Approx 12:35 AM, very early Saturday morning, the fire alarm went off in
> the condo building I live in.  It turned out to be a hypersensitive
> smoke detecter that detected someone smoking (duhhh), so no damage
> except for some lost sleep.
> 
>   I did grab my latest backup CD on the way out the door, but the
> incident made me think.  I have my /etc and home directories backed up
> on CD.  However, I also have a few gigs of personal stuff, e.g. scans of
> photos of my late parents etc, that I'd be very unhappy about losing.  I
> realized that if the place burned down, especially while I was at work,
> I would lose everything, including the backups.

I suggest a harddrive in an firewire/usb/dual case.  I suggest an 
arrangement of at least two such devices with a rule that at least one 
must be kept off site at all times.  This type of solution is used for 
many home users and small businesses.  You can easily give yourself 
hundreds of GB storage per device and run a full/incremental backup scheme 
with a staging area locally.  For a $300 initial investment you could 
be set for years of safe backups.

Tiger Direct are currently offering 120GB 5400rpm drives for $49.97 (after 
rebate, excluding tax, etc).  I was unimpressed with their customer 
service recently but the value of these drives for backup devices is hard 
to ignore.  Since backups would typically happen when you are asleep the 
slower rpm of the drive is not a significant issue, IMHO.

Reference: 
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/Category/category_hdd.asp

Otherwise watch out for DDS tapes - they can be a problem in themselves.  
Higher end tape devices are much better.

As for encryption, watch out.  If you lose the ability to unencrypt the 
backups yourself you are stuffed.  The time this is most likely to happen 
is during a disaster.

Leigh's suggestion to swap backups with a trusted friend is a good one.

OH and run a Disaster Recovery test.  If you buy a new machine (or have an 
old one available) pretend you need to restore everything and see how it 
goes.  A surprising number of issues can crop up even for home users.

Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc.
Senior Technical Consultant, OpenTrend Solutions Ltd.
Phone: +1-416-669-3073 Email: rbrockway-wgAaPJgzrDxH4x6Dk/4f9A at public.gmane.org http://www.opentrend.net
OpenTrend Solutions: Reliable, secure solutions to real world problems.
Contributing Member of Software in the Public Interest (http://www.spi-inc.org)
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