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back the f up.

it seems like the ideal thing, overall, is to have data in at least 2 places, but even better: 3. so, your mac (duh), an external drive, and an online backup or a 3rd drive, in another location.

no matter what, there is NO excuse for anyone not to have a backup.
 
fisherking said:
it seems like the ideal thing, overall, is to have data in at least 2 places, but even better: 3. so, your mac (duh), an external drive, and an online backup or a 3rd drive, in another location.

no matter what, there is NO excuse for anyone not to have a backup.
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Loads don’t! My parents for one. My neighbor until I convinced her (mind you I also had to convince her switching off the password on her WiFi wasn’t a great idea either!
 
Weaselboy said:
That can be a legit concern, but it is solvable. I use the app Arq to backup to Backblaze B2 servers like @BigMcGuire mentioned, and Arq encrypts my data before it leaves the computer. So even if Backblaze in this case wanted to see my data, they could not.
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I use ARQ+B2 on both my MacMini server and my MBP, it's great! I was using ARQ with AWS, but it got quite expensive, B2 is turning out to be around 1/6th the cost.

Now my Mini uses the internal drive for the OS, and a RAID array as the main storage device. Time Machine backs up the OS drive to two an external drives, and ARQ backs up the the OS to B2. The main RAID array backs up nightly to a second RAID array. The second RAID array backs up weekly to a third RAID array. ARQ backs up the second RAID array to B2.

My MBP backs up to B2 hourly, as well as two different Time Machine drives, a travel one, and on at my desk at work.

Some people think It's overkill, but I've lost important data before and won't go through that again. ARQ/B2 is VERY cheap insurance against a catastrophic loss, with 3.8TB of data stored there I'm at $9.19 this month so far, I doubt I'll hit $20.
 
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LumbermanSVO said:
I use ARQ+B2 on both my MacMini server and my MBP, it's great! I was using ARQ with AWS, but it got quite expensive, B2 is turning out to be around 1/6th the cost.
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I made the same S3 to B2 swap for the same reason. I have about 45GB on B2 for twenty cents per month. I don't even know how they stay in business. I found B2's upload speeds much faster than S3 also.
 

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Since I am retired and have been for a few years now, no more days spent at an office (in my case, library) away from home so no convenient desk or cabinet in which to stash and protect my drives. That is a good place to keep them, though, at work. Some people store external drives at the home of a friend or relative, and that can be a solution, too.

And, yes, sadly, a lot of people simply do not accept the reality that it is important to back up one's files and to have more than one backup at that. Unfortunately for too many people to learn this lesson, all it takes is one disaster -- a massive computer crash or something else -- and by then it's too late.
 
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Clix wrote:
"I would think that unless one lives in a really nice, evenly-balanced climate year-round that extreme heat or extreme cold, not to mention extreme humidity, in terms of weather conditions could adversely affect an external HDD or SSD left in a vehicle all the time..... ?"

I originally thought the same... but...
... I use SSDs and USB flash drives, kept in a zip-lock bag with a dessicant inside to absorb moisture. I live in southern New England, the temperatures go from 95F in the summer to -10F in the winter.

After a couple of years, everything is still fine. No apparent problems at all.
 
Fishrrman said:
Clix wrote:
"I would think that unless one lives in a really nice, evenly-balanced climate year-round that extreme heat or extreme cold, not to mention extreme humidity, in terms of weather conditions could adversely affect an external HDD or SSD left in a vehicle all the time..... ?"

I originally thought the same... but...
... I use SSDs and USB flash drives, kept in a zip-lock bag with a dessicant inside to absorb moisture. I live in southern New England, the temperatures go from 95F in the summer to -10F in the winter.

After a couple of years, everything is still fine. No apparent problems at all.
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That is really interesting -- and surprising! Is your car parked in a garage or is it outside left to the elements all the time?
 
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Fishrrman said:
I keep my "offsite" backups IN MY CAR. (used to keep them in my locker at work, but I'm retired now).

The important data resides on an encrypted volume, so if by chance someone stole the car, all they'd get "is a drive" (and no personal data).

There are also backups at home, kept in the basement in a [marginally] fireproof/waterproof box.

Not to mention the OTHER backups sitting right here scattered around the table!
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Are all of these at your home location? Seeing what happened in the Paradise fire, if you had to flee by foot would that not mean that you would lose everything?

Weaselboy said:
I made the same S3 to B2 swap for the same reason. I have about 45GB on B2 for twenty cents per month. I don't even know how they stay in business. I found B2's upload speeds much faster than S3 also.
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Of all the inexpensive cloud services I have used Backblaze uploads have been the fastest. I don't use their B2 service since it would be too expensive for the 15 TB backup, so just use their regular service and the BackBlaze Backup preference panel.
 
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HD Fan wrote:
"Are all of these at your home location? Seeing what happened in the Paradise fire, if you had to flee by foot would that not mean that you would lose everything?"

I suppose that would be the case.
I don't use, nor do I trust "the cloud".
I signed into iCloud once for about 15 seconds, then signed out, never to access it again... ;)

Where I live, not much danger of fires like those in California...
 
Fishrrman said:
HD Fan wrote:
"Are all of these at your home location? Seeing what happened in the Paradise fire, if you had to flee by foot would that not mean that you would lose everything?"

I suppose that would be the case.
I don't use, nor do I trust "the cloud".
I signed into iCloud once for about 15 seconds, then signed out, never to access it again... ;)

Where I live, not much danger of fires like those in California...
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seriously, what's the issue with 'the cloud'? i mean, if you're going online at all, you're connected to the same world you would be using a cloud service. anyway, just curious...
 
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fisherking said:
seriously, what's the issue with 'the cloud'? i mean, if you're going online at all, you're connected to the same world you would be using a cloud service. anyway, just curious...
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It's probably things like celeb iCloud leaks, hacks, government requests of a iphone5c unlock etc and all of a sudden, the regular joe thinks they're important enough to have their vacation photos pried upon.

On the other hand, if targeted advertising/privacy is an issue, a simple solution would be to encrypt it
 
Until one experience a lost of one's data, the importance backing up will be executed by a few. Then, after such data loss, one becomes paranoid having several different backups, then after a few years of that, one reverts to one backup...at least, that's my case. I don't do iCloud or any cloud storage presently, and don't have succession will/plan for my data either...but of course, that's coming.
 
HDFan said:
You might want to consider a safe deposit box.
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That's what I use and this way I am assured that my personal data is safe and sound offsite from my home and yet not at risk from other eyes seeing any of it. I can go to the bank at any time (during open hours) and retrieve my drive(s) and/or swap them out for newly-updated ones. They are duplicates of drives I also have at home, of course, so that if I need a particular image or file or folder that's not a problem, I don't have to run to the bank to retrieve the drive that it's on! I just reach into my cabinet where I store my drives at home and grab the one I need, plug it in and.....voila!

That said, I do also use iCloud for some photos and and files and folders which are not personal, so that they are readily accessible to me with the touch of fingers on keyboard. I am just rather leery of entrusting my personal medical information or tax information to "the Cloud," and so that is why I have not wholly embraced the concept of putting everything up there.
 
Clix Pix said:
I am just rather leery of entrusting my personal medical information or tax information to "the Cloud,"
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A reasonable concern. But your data is likely already in the cloud, but in less obvious public places than iCloud. For example the IRS has been hacked:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-id...ackers-social-security-number-get-transcript/

My local hospital/doctors use an online portal for all health information. It certainly is convenient, in that I can check in, review lab results, submit prescription refills, see test results, etc. all from an IOS app. But if a hacker figured out where that database lived my information could be hacked, as it is in the cloud.
 
rafark said:
Yeah, your data is "yours", but you need to realize that when you send your data to a remote server, "your" data is processed and stored by multiple third party machines anyhere in the world. You have no control over what they get to see, share and even store. There is this legal wall that makes them tell you what they do and what they don't, but you really have no way to tell. More often than not, when you "delete" some data from a website or online service, it's not really destroyed, it gets hidden from you.

I'm a programmer so I may know one thing or two. There are laws regarding this, and I'm not saying your data is strictly being unlawfully used, my main point is you don't know for sure what is done with your data when it reaches a third party machine. When you back up locally you have 100% control of your data, when you send it to the cloud, you don't.
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It really depends. Ideally, the encryption keys are not known by the third party. This may not be simple or straightforward in practice but it’s something to consider when choosing an online backup service.
 
When I was setting up CrashPlan awhile back, I took the option to use a private key. The risk is that if I lost the key, they could not help. Of course, there is a trust assumption that the client program did not send them the key anyway.

DS
 
+1 for Crashplan. I administer it on our network for our corporate users and its has been quite valuable the times that a drive has failed, or a user had their laptop stolen.
 
nollimac said:
Until one experience a lost of one's data, the importance backing up will be executed by a few. Then, after such data loss, one becomes paranoid having several different backups, then after a few years of that, one reverts to one backup...at least, that's my case. I don't do iCloud or any cloud storage presently, and don't have succession will/plan for my data either...but of course, that's coming.
Click to expand...

I think it's important to make your backup solution as passive as possible. The less you have to think about it, the more likely you are to keep doing it.
 
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rafark said:
You have no control over what they get to see, share and even store.
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Both crashplan and backblaze allow you to encrypt your data optionally with a locally stored key which they do not have. This renders the data on the cloud I servers opaque to the service provider and satisfies your privacy concerns.

Only in the event that you need to do a restore is your data potentially vulnerable to misuse.

It’s not perfect, but the situation is considerably less bleak than you make it sound.
 
Lumberman wrote:
"I think it's important to make your backup solution as passive as possible. The less you have to think about it, the more likely you are to keep doing it."

I will respectfully disagree.

The whole concept of Time Machine is "passive backup".
Just plug in a drive, turn on TM, and you're "backed up" automatically, right?
Couldn't be easier... right?

Well, that sounds great, until the user has a "moment of extreme need", then tries to access the TM backup, and finds that .... he can't.

I've seen many, many posts right here at macrumors from users who couldn't "get to" their TM backups.

Cloned backups, on the other hand, take a bit more "user attention" to maintain. But I have seen very very few posts from users who created a cloned backup and later on could not access it (at least in the finder, even if they couldn't boot from it).

I've never used Time Machine, not once, never even opened the program (in fact, I've REMOVED the TM app and pref pane from my main Mac).

I have a regular backup schedule that I keep to (Sunday mornings, sitting down with some breakfast cereal and "running CCC"). Not to mention whenever I feel like it "in between".
 
Fishrrman said:
Well, that sounds great, until the user has a "moment of extreme need", then tries to access the TM backup, and finds that .... he can't.
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that's an absurb statement.

a very-small percentage of macusers live on this forum (most live in the real world). how many macusers don't use time machine? i mean, if you're reading about people with issues with TM, here, on this forum, that's a tiny percentage of the overall user base.

i don't use TM, but, for 99% of macusers, it's both essential, and simple. and works.
 
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