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Thoughts on backups
- Thread starter Ambrosia7177
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Seems to me the OP thinks his 2012 MBP has usb2. I would imagine he would only need to make sure he is using an USB3 external drive, with a proper USB3 cable, to accelerate his backups. Ultimately a USB3 with HDD might be safer (and much cheaper) to store data long term, rather than an SSD. I use SSDs for system and scratch drives, but back up to HDD. on USB3 HDD back up of 250G should only take less than 10 minutes with CCC or SuperDuper, then after smart enabled, each consecutive backup should be a fraction of that time.
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Correct. FileVault2 secures data at rest. And if my laptop is running, then the data is unencrypted. And if I am online with unencrypted data, it could get compromised.
I supposed if the data that @Weaselboy mentions is encrypted before it leaves your computer, it should in theory be safe. However, my first rule is that I know there are lots of people smarter than I who can hack things that I think are secure but which aren't really.
Putting my whole personal and business life on the Internet - even if it seems like it is encrypted - doesn't seem like a good first choice.
Google thought it's data transmissions were safe, and yet they got hacked by the NSA. If they aren't smart enough to keep data safe, how could I ever accomplish that?
I get that my data is at risk when my computer is running and I am online, but personally that is still way safer than uploading it onto the Internet even if it is encrypted.
Encryption is only as secure as the keys, and I would suspect that there are ways to get your encryption keys using the cloud storage thing mentioned above.
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Also, if you upload an encrypted file, it could stay on the cloud forever, and eventually the current encryption strategy will be able to be cracked, so if Amazon or whoever had an old version lying around,and you didn't update it to a more secure version, it could conceivably get brute forced.
Once you upload something, you really lose control of it regardless of what companies profess.
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I totally respect @Weaselboy and lots of other's advice on here, but I prefer to hang with the paranoid group!
I run my own business from home and use Crashplan and other encrypted options for cloud backups - I figure that the risk of someone eventually hacking my business data is far, far less than someone stealing the physical devices or fire, flood or another catastrophe destroying it! If you don't want to use cloud backups then you absolutely must have another off-site backup strategy (such as rotating a backup disk in a bank vault) otherwise you run the risk of paranoia destroying your business.
My view of backups is you can't have too many so this is my strategy:
1) All company data is stored on a Synology NAS (with redundant drives)
2) The NAS snapshots all critical folders every 15 minutes
2) All machines backup to the NAS
3) That NAS backs up the business critical data to a locally attached hard drive
4) It also backs up to another (small) NAS in my garage
5) The entire NAS is backed up (encrypted) to Crashplan (this includes the backups of the local machines) with deltas backing up every 15 minutes
6) Business critical data is backed up (encrypted) to Azure
7) Business critical data is backed up to another server hosted on Azure, which is then backed (encrypted) up to Crashplan
8) Business critical data is encrypted and synced to OneDrive for Business
Basically, I've designed my backup strategy to avoid any single point of failure and have multiple levels to ensure easy recovery from local storage if I delete something accidentally (which is probably the single most common cause of data loss
)
I totally get where you are coming from, and you need to do what you think is best for your usage and needs.
The main reason I use the online backup as a third line of defense is for the "house burned down" scenario. I literally have my entire life on my computer... financial documents, family photos... everything. If my house burns to the ground I can fairly easily get everything back from my encrypted online backup. If the potential security threat of having things online outweighs that benefit for you, I get it.
Some people make a third backup and store it offsite at the office or a friends house to cover this issue.
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You are correct and I did not pick up on that. Sounds like maybe OP has some USB2 enclosures he is using.
I run my own business from home and use Crashplan and other encrypted options for cloud backups - I figure that the risk of someone eventually hacking my business data is far, far less than someone stealing the physical devices or fire, flood or another catastrophe destroying it! If you don't want to use cloud backups then you absolutely must have another off-site backup strategy (such as rotating a backup disk in a bank vault) otherwise you run the risk of paranoia destroying your business.
My view of backups is you can't have too many so this is my strategy:
1) All company data is stored on a Synology NAS (with redundant drives)
2) The NAS snapshots all critical folders every 15 minutes
2) All machines backup to the NAS
3) That NAS backs up the business critical data to a locally attached hard drive
4) It also backs up to another (small) NAS in my garage
5) The entire NAS is backed up (encrypted) to Crashplan (this includes the backups of the local machines) with deltas backing up every 15 minutes
6) Business critical data is backed up (encrypted) to Azure
7) Business critical data is backed up to another server hosted on Azure, which is then backed (encrypted) up to Crashplan
8) Business critical data is encrypted and synced to OneDrive for Business
Basically, I've designed my backup strategy to avoid any single point of failure and have multiple levels to ensure easy recovery from local storage if I delete something accidentally (which is probably the single most common cause of data loss
I plan on putting my backup in my safe deposit box.
What business do you run that you need that frequency of backing up and with so much redundancy?
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Me too. See my safe deposit box comment. That is about as secure as you can get. The only problem is that I admittedly am not going to the bank every hour like maybe your cloud backup is.
Are you telling me that there is 10 times the difference between the $15 USB 2 external enclosure that I have now and a $15 USB 3 external enclosure that I could buy?
And you are saying that if I just bought a USB 3 external enclosure that my clones on my old 2012 MBP would be 10 times faster??
IT consultancy and custom software development (mainly for large companies). If we lost our source code, the company would fold so I have a big incentive!
Further consideration for backup strategy (including redundancy) in regards to malware, as demonstrated by the KeRanger incident earlier this year :
http://researchcenter.paloaltonetwo...ted-transmission-bittorrent-client-installer/
@Weaselboy, will the enclosure you recommended above also work with a regular 2.5" HDD? That is, could I use that case for both an SSD and HDD?
Here is the link again.
BTW, I ordered the case, but am kind of debating if it would be safer to use HDD for backups or the SSD.
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Yes... that enclosure will work with either an SSD or a 2.5" hard drive. A HDD is no safer than a SSD for backups. That said, the only real upside to the SSD is you will get much faster clones if that matters to you.
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Some people say that SSD are safer because you don't have to worry about head crashes. But some people imply that SSD are not as reliable for long-term storage (i.e. backups).
Any experts care to speak up on this?
This article makes it sound like SSDs would be riskier for backups...
SSD reliability in the real world: Google's experience
Not really, That article is just saying an SSD tends to die differently, as in they just up and die, vs a hard drive might start throwing errors first. There really is not much good data either way on this. I sure have never seen anything that would scare me away from using an SSD for backups.
I was keying off the last paragraph...
For people who have a lot on the line - and aren't ready for the Cloud quite yet - maybe a good strategy is to do backups using both SSD and HDD?
When I need a quick backup, it sounds like the SSD will help. And if I want a different format for redundancy, then having at least one HDD in the mix would accomplish that.
And since @Weaselboy tells me that the external case he recommended will work on both SSD and HDD, then I can accomplish this approach.
Geesh, I never knew proper backups could be so much work! Oh well, I sure appreciate everyone's input in this thread. There is tons of great advice here!!
Thanks guys!!
I really can't see where they get this from in that article It seems to rely on some unpublished report we can't see.
I have never seen any study showing an SSD is more likely to lose data than a HDD.