Home network disaster backups
1I have a small home network of all Win10 PCs:
- a main HTPC (running Plex, recording OTA shows, curating media, casual gaming), 6TB
- a couple of work/email/daily use PCs, 256GB
- a gaming laptop, 2TB
- a work laptop, 1TB
How are folks solving for recovery if you’re incapacitated or dead, or your home is destroyed?
- 21 comments, 27 replies
- Comment
I am using a backup program (EaseUS) to do full system backups (all disk partitions) for all of them that fit on a 5TB external drive.
I want to have a removable backup someplace disaster-proof or nearby/offsite in case the house gets robbed, burned down, or tornado levels the place.
I thought about a NAS, but a burglar taking the NAS or getting destroyed with the house isn’t helpful for recovery.
I currently have 2 drives and alternate them making full backups of every PC and storing it with a friend I see regularly.
I’ve thought about getting a data safe and storing the drives in there, alternating them as now. Or maybe using a storage locker.
A bank safe deposit box is not an option because if I perish, my survivors can’t get into it without a court order, and if I forget a payment (or my survivors do or don’t know it exists and my backups are in it), the bank siezes the contents (my valuable data). There is a similar risk with online storage/backups. And banks don’t like you goinv in every coupke of weeks to swap out the backup hard drives.
I’ve thought about a NAS and combining it with cloud backups (iDrive seems to be a favorite). They are all subscriptions, and using external drives is a 3-4 year ROI.
Encrypting the backups is a must have.
What are fellow mehtizens using/doing about backups?
What are the plans for your survivors/successors recovering and sifting through the family photos, your games, your software license keys, and transferring them to your survivors/kids/relatives in a worst case scenario?
Does someone know where your backup is, someone has the password (or has/gets it after you’re gone), or how to recover your data? The spouse knows it, but if we’re taken out by the same event, the plan is hosed.
@mike808 The conventional wisdom is to have three copies of your data, two of which are on different storage media and one of which is remote. What I’ve been doing is using Windows Storage Spaces to back up to my NAS, and having that encrypted and backed up to Google Drive, for which I have unlimited storage through my alma mater.
I’ve been considering switching to Backblaze though. Even if for me it would mean paying, they have a cool feature where you generate a security key to keep your stuff secure, and only you have it so they couldn’t recover it if they wanted to.
My important data is financial info (wills, insurance, titles, bank and investment statements, etc.) in the form of document scans, and would be needed to execute my will. If also includes some extra Yubikey fobs for 2FA to access password vaults and other highly protected data. That is much smaller and fits on an encrypted thumb drive.
I used to use clonezilla for the backups, but my survivors won’t know how to use it to recover my data to pass along. So I went with a popular backup program to be easier for them to use/understand without being geeks.
So are there better tools or plans folks are using and happy with? What doesn’t work or you don’t have a solution for, but wish you did?
So, what I’m doing currently is using Backblaze for the home Windows PC ($6/ month for unlimited- anything on the PC gets backed up), and then using Backblaze’s B2 backup service for the NAS- $.005 / GB per month to store (the details on how I’m backing up the NAS are a bit funky due to Synology’s weirdness, so let me know if you’re interested).
https://www.backblaze.com/
On legacy planning, I haven’t done any of that- I know Gmail and possibly some other providers offer such a thing where you can designate someone on your account.
Hope that helps!
@dashcloud I do nearly the same thing - Backblaze on the laptop (mac) and I use B2 for backing up the nas/fileserver (custom code using https://restic.net/). Honestly this setup is complicated because I enjoy messing with it. I doubt I could teach a non-technical family member how to decrypt and restore it.
Separately I share some important files with family members using Google Drive (advanced directives, living wills, etc). Master password for the password vault is on paper.
Honestly, if I’m dead, it does not matter what happens to the data on my systems. All of the important stuff is stored in the googles, or somewhere else on the clouds.
Stuff people would need right now (my will, financial accounts, etc.) there are paper copies. The password for my computer and phone a trusted friend and one relative has. I also have a paper document with all passwords of accounts that people would need access to (which obviously needs updated each time I change one).
One disaster that happened slowly, 10 years ago, taught me a hard lesson about just having electronic backups done automatically. My hard drive was very slowly dying. Each backup backed up less because of that. When it finally failed I had nothing much on that backup. I have some manual backups on flash drives of the photos and other documents family would be interested in/needs (there is all sorts of crap on my computer no one but me cares about). I also now run a test of my hard drive health pretty frequently. I did it before but not enough to catch the slow failure.
I don’t know how normal people cope without being able to run checksums on all their data as a filesystem feature. Making sure your data is still there is more of a fighting-entropy kind of problem than you’d think. Systems can partially fail, or become unreadable; data can get corrupted and then corruption can propagate.
Doing backups right is effortful, like most things. For me, I’d probably have multiple unencrypted HDDs for the most important stuff, stored in a safety deposit box, have checksums on the data (via ZFS, or another tool), and have encrypted cloud backup on top of that.
I’m more scared of encryption as a potential vector to deny yourself access to your own data than I think is typical. It’s still utterly necessary for cloud services though.
I’m partway there. CrashPlan has a Linux client, so I use that. All my stuff gets centralized on the old Linux machine, where the data is “scrubbed” every so often to make sure it hasn’t bit rotted. Haven’t gotten to the safety deposit box part yet.
There will be additional copies of everything important on another computer, or some cloud services, too.
If anybody has old burned optical disks still around, get your data off those ASAP. I was looking at some of those recently, maybe 10-15 years old, and the failure rate was very high – maybe a third of them wouldn’t read. Of the remainder, I’m sure there was some corruption that went undetected. Same deal for flash drives and SD cards – they’re extra failure prone.
@InnocuousFarmer
Yep. Practicing restoring from those backups is also important. Especially if it won’t be you that’s doing it.
@InnocuousFarmer
Definitely. There are “one password to rule them all” solutions (LastPass, BitWarden, Dashlane, 1Password, etc) and then there are cryptosteel.com solutions for that one master password protecting the others.
Am going to try out a new product, DiceKeys.com, but being plastic, is still vulnerable to fire/melting.
Or the “in the event of my death/incapacity” envelopes (still subject to fire/water, not as much as plastic/electronics though). Next-level would be to split that master passphrase in multiple envelopes, but that requires absolute cooperation (and not losing the envelopes) among the survivors to recover your data and access to your assets.
@mike808 I do worry about the reliability of my own memory, for the master password at least. When these long high-entropy passwords make their way into my fingers and pass out of conscious memory… ehhh…
I think I’m always going to have at least one unencrypted backup. In case I get bonked on the head.
@InnocuousFarmer For “daily use” passwords, those go into the password vault app (LastPass, BitWarden, etc.). For the true SHTF passwords that are only needed for an actual recovery scenario, those I plan to make passwords stored in a cryptosteel.com device or in a dicekeys.com device.
Memory is a failure point, the devices are physical storage of the password. Like a key. Not different than a piece of paper with the passphrase written on it and stored in a lockbox or safe inside a sealed envelope.
My career has been in encryption key management, so this is the individual personal manifestation of the stuff I do at work, but since I’m not at work, I can’t use all of the fancy tools or have staff tasked with doing all this stuff.
It is a challenge scaling it down and working out what “fits” for personal use and individual use cases and likely tools (programs, devices) available. We have the same challenges businesses do with data theft, devices with data getting lost/unrecoverable, continuity/disaster recovery, and managing authorized access, and documenting the access/use control protocols and procedures to be resilient.
I really think the area needs revisiting now that we are in the age of everything-is-a-service, and licensing that means “storage” is never owned, only rented from someone else, and that has its own risks. Then there are complications of using mobile devices for authentication, which are subject to their own loss-of-use risks, and 2FA protocols that don’t account for things like “what happens to your phone number after you die” when all of your access is tied to your phone number (technically whatever device is responding at that phone number). Or if your phone is lost/destroyed/broken, or worse, stolen. In this regard, it is more like your wallet than a computer with some data on it (so where would the backup of that data be, exactly? I’m not talking about your pictures, I’m talking about all of the accounts tied to those text messages or need a PIN or a fingerprint to use/unlock/access/do something some account somewhere else?
Who pays the “rent” on these services after you die, and the rent payments stop?
We have a lot of challenges ahead as we go through the biggest generational transfer of everything in history as the baby boomers pass on and lots of services haven’t figured out how to “authenticate” a customer that is no longer living and transfer those assets to their rightful heirs, successors, and assigns.
Or is it one big global heist of virtual landlords foreclosing and siezing every asset they can?
For those mentioning safe deposit boxes, they’re a money loser for banks, and in a disaster, the bank is going to be closed. Think New Orleans or Lake Charles or tornado where I am. You won’t be able to get to your stuff. And more importantly, neither will your survivors, because the bank’s contract is with you, not your survivors. The fine print in them takes away all the things you think they protect for you.
Hence a DIY offsite plan.
The password conveyance is a real problem as well. I use a group of thumb drives and VeraCrypt for a password-protected encrypted drive file. The drive has a copy of the veracrypt program alongside the file.
I mount the encrypted drive file, and then have copies of the most important stuff for my survivors - the wills, property titles, insurance documents, bank/savings account statements, tax returns, etc.
And an unencrypted export of my password vault. The drive is encrypted, remember.
I also have my crypto/bitcoin wallet seeds, and 2FA TOTP seeds (the QR thingys that Authy uses to calculate that changinh code to login).
And lastly, an envelope with instructions on how to run VeraCrypt to mount this drive file, and generally what’s on it, with the password in a separate “open in the event of my untimely demise or incapacity” envelope.
Trusted family members and my lawyer get those and I replace/swap/refresh them annually (checking that sealed envelope, of course). Thumb drives are cheap, and I can make a test drive for them to practice.
For the system backups, that’s more for disaster recovery and theft protection than conveying my digital assets to my survivors and heirs.
If I get a NAS and use that for the PC backups, then I have the problem of backing up the NAS, and it won’t protect from disaster or theft since they’re all in the same house and readily accessible.
I’m leaning towards getting a data safe big enough to hold an external drive, and keep doing the monthly backup and swap. The drives are password protected encrypted as well. Thinking about using encrypting drives with pin-pads built-in, but the capacity isn’t there (they’re modified SSDs).
Also, hard drives if not used for a long time can freeze up. And NAND-based SSDs and thumb drives do lose their charge if not powered up (its physics, not sure if testing has been done for that offline-for-a-long-time use case).
The encrypting drives I’m thinking of are like these from apricorn.com.
/image apricorn securekey 3Z
@mike808
I’m not any kind of expert on any of this. I have mostly squirmed out of it all by dumping stuff and using a lawyer. But I don’t have many of the family needs you carry, so:
I got got rid of my of my once excessive collection of digital media. By handing most of it off to friends who wanted it and who would let me access (I’d have to go get a copy) it if I wanted to play it.
Have not gotten rid of all of it yet tho. Because lazy.
If you have the need to run media servers etc, and have family who wants to watch stuff: Your home network sounds nice.
A cloud backup of some sort, for that stuff, encrypted, sounds like a good service to purchase. And an on-site and off-site backup of some sort, the off-site one stored w a friend you really trust who is responsible and who will tolerate the swap-outs and updating.
You and friend could perform these services for each other. It’s important to find the right person tho.
Someone who you totally trust and who has been your close friend or similar (family etc) for decades.
And … someone who will engage in doing this without getting resentful. Or someone whom you compensate for the time/energy intrusions by taking them to dinner or by doing all their tech support etc.
and this person must be the sort who won’t talk about the arrangement to other parties at all, unless the other parties are directly involved and have a right to know.
For personal documents etc:
I suggest you consider whether to have include these within your mostly-media-high-storage-use backup at all. It simply might make sense to back them up separately.
Some of these are essential but don’t change much. Wills, other legal stuff, etc. whatever other arrangements you engage in, I suggest keeping a copy of these types of docs in digital as well as paper form, at your lawyer’s office.
I also suggest you consider whether to give your lawyer a copy of the passwords. Perhaps in a sealed “open only in case of emergency” envelope. That might make sense or not. Depends on the trust and relationship you have w the lawyer.
Any interaction w your lawyer will cost you, unless you have a great relationship w the lawyer, or unless the lawyer is family or a best friend sort. So keep that in mind.
For all the personal docs; those that change constantly (therefore no lawyer copy) and those that are mostly static: I suggest a separate backup system from the big terabyte media backup system. Hopefully, multiple backup strategies, all automated (or thumb drive copies); all encrypted.
Possibly keep an encrypted copy of these at the same friend who you have chosen as a partner for your off-site backups.
And for these essential backup, at least once a year, rehearse the recovery procedure with your spouse and your older kids. The spouse should, i suspect, have access to the passwords, thru a password locker program, and also thru a lawyer if that fails.
If you have adult siblings or other relations you totally trust, you might wanna give them password access as well. That s strictly personal judgement
Also, anyone who partners with you re this should have a completely trustworthy and stable household. IE spouse and other adults are stable and trustworthy. IE, no drug addicts, careless sorts, traditional dodgy characters, adults who have not grown into adult habits and attitudes, etc, in the household. And hopefully no extremely troubled kids who will ransack or destroy stuff on bad days.
Your children or other no-adult dependents who are part of the rehearsal and who are part of the reason you are doing all this prob shouldn’t get password access unless you are pretty sure they’re ready to handle that responsibly. But they should know how to get the passwords in case something horrible happens to both you and your spouse.
For instance, the lawyer/family member (or whoever that partners with you in this) should know to give your dependents or their guardians the passwords and to remind them how to get access to stuff, in the terrible event that this action is warranted by unexpected and unrecoverable emergency.
And then there is stuff that you might keep, but that no one needs to see, ever. Perhaps you and your partner or spouse have truly private material just for the two of you. Or similar.
I suggest backing this stuff using yet another method that only you and spouse or partner know. Using a password only shared by the two of you. If access to that gets lost, it’s lost.
—-
And then there are system backups. You know better what you need for that than anyone one else. If you need off-site, I suggest the same truly trusted friend or family member as above.
—-
And you might have other categories: stuff related to a business or project perhaps, that is rightfully to be shared with other parties. Each of these needs to be thought thru carefully. They all have their own “people problems”.
This is always a more complex prob than it first appears, depending on needs.
It’s a pity the best solutions aren’t more widely worked out and well understood.
And it’s a prob of habit, of access, of automation, of regular updating, of rehearsal, of encryption, of tech competence, or memory, of choosing partners carefully and then maintaining good relations with them over time as the doing of this gets wearisome.
Obviously your off-site partner ought to be “techie enough” to appreciate the point and this be willing to put up with it all.
Hope you come up with a great setup.
If you do solve kinda “all of this”, pls share w us as much as you can.
/youtube Betty Ann Buckley memory
@f00l
Well, as I was writing the above, much other discussion happened to cover all that.
/giphy oops.
@f00l All of the above is where I am at.
As you said, it is a shame these processes and people problems aren’t better worked out with products available to help, even if just how-to planning worksheets.
I’m definitely on the “different threats/risks have different backup/recovery tools, plans, and people involved” page.
However, the need is the same, I think for everyone.
Another thing is that biometics suck for your survivors. Your lawyer or kids can’t unlock your phone after you’ve been cremated. And your fingerprints deteriorate with age. Do you have your spouse’s fingerprints registered in your phone? Face-login too? (Rhetorical)
@mike808
I don’t willingly use biometrics.
And if you are unconscious or dead, the gov or bad guys might still be briefly able to use your biometrics.
Btw forced examination of personal electronics has happened to US citizens at incoming border crossings, even tho these citizens were on no watchlists and were suspected of no crime. So I suggest only taking electronics abroad that can be easily wiped for border crossings (chromebooks for instance).
Also if you are arrested, the cops can biometrically access your electronics without your consent I think. But they can’t force you to give them a password.
@f00l Correct. Everyone is focused on trading their 4th amendment rights for their 2nd.
@f00l That’s a tall order: find somebody trustworthy, competent, technical, and diligent, and their spouse can’t be crazy? How many people are even like that on Earth? … five?
@f00l @InnocuousFarmer Yup. It is a tall order. Hence the challenge.
New terms in the wills are who gets what passwords to transfer control (and thus, ownership) of “online accounts”.
e.g. your Steam account and all those backlogged games in it. Or your cloud storage or photo accounts.
Or who takes over your social media accounts? Youtube, Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo, LinkedIn, etc.
And who shuts down your other accounts - Tinder, P-hub, darkweb, etc. is another issue where you don’t want your heirs to know exist or aren’t going to them (and might find the passwords in your password vault).
@mike808
This is a case if either knowing someone who gets your approach and is ok with it and really cares about your friendship and is really tech savvy and trustworthy who will do these things.
And about whom you arrange w your spouse to allow home network access to that person for the shutting down and deleting of all this, should something happen to you.
And perhaps doing all this from a special, dedicated-use non-networked machine. Which your spouse can’t access and has instructions or wipe should something happen to you.
Or else just letting it all go. Tell no one and hope no one ever looks.
Perhaps a diff password locker, just for this stuff.
If you ever become seriously infirm, or might become so, perhaps start killing that stuff off then, ASAP and permanently.
We don’t really need to take each and every one of our youthful enthusiasms with us all our lives …
@f00l I don’t have such accounts but I know those that do. My father passed away recently, and at 85 was barraged daily with right-wing propaganda nonsense (not the usual Fox propaganda, but the aliens-have-infested-the-libtards-brains National Enquirer Q-Anon Russian-funded-NRA pizza-gate alex-jones shoot-up-with-bleach-to-cure-COVID conspiracy theory stuff), along with the racist xenophobic crap those same groups send to old retired white guys in former pro-slavery states to tell them which candidates to vote for. I just spent a month shutting down all that crap, getting him off mailing lists (that you know they all pass along to their other shell organization when you unsub from one), and cleaning up his FB and Twitter (not sure even knew what Twitter was by that time).
@f00l There are people that I am sure don’t want their kids to know about some accounts because the information would just be exploited by an ex-spouse and their other parent.
The stuff to just let disappear into the well-known forgetfullness of the Internet is also a category and I agree with that plan - I just used more obvious examples to note that even in deciding things you don’t want to pass along or ever recover, you still need to plan for their “end-of-life” decommissioning too.
The “digital possessions estate” Is to my knowledge not worked out.
My stuff that’s in my physical possession can be dealt with. But I “own” (IE have “use rights“ to) a ton of streamable or downloadable media. Some vid, a ton of books and audiobooks.
I haven’t worked out what to do about all this at end of life. (Assuming I can see that coming from afar)
@f00l I plan to transfer control of the accounts to a successor.
i.e. give my kids the password to the Steam account, and the 2FA, OTP code, confirmation email, etc. Then they can login and change the email address of the account to theirs. Not my problem for their systems to be unaware of my passing. Once it’s changed, they control/own whatever the account had access to. Just like a hacker/identity thief would, just with my permission.
Gotta decide what is really worth backing up. MP3 songs? Digital movies? Recorded OTA shows? Old college papers? None of that should be taking up your backup space. Widdle it down to the important stuff and make use of free cloud backups (google, amazon, etc) that are usually limited to like 100GB or something. Even family photos aren’t that crucial in the grand scheme of things.
@medz I’m actually mulling over how to separate the underlying windows 10 OS from the rest of the stuff and back up just that (kind of like an overlay).
It could be possible, I just don’t know how much Wndows hides away in secret files and entwines in the registry that break stuff if you do what I’m thinking should be possible.
i.e. move/recover a system by restoring this backup on top of a vlean fresh windows 10 install.
Anyone using iDrive.com for their backups?
Compared to Backblaze.com?
I have used crashplan for over a decade. A few years ago, they changed to a “business” model. It’s $10/mo per computer, and it has worked well. I also back up to NAS units at home, but I use crashplan for offsite backup in case the house burns down…
@shahnm Yikes. $10/mo is $120/yr and per PC, that’s $700+ per year for essentially insurance. That’s a steep ongoing price, IMO.
I’m trying not to have my backups be an ongoing expense. It’s not like you start and stop month-to-month, so I’m not sure why they even offer it that way, other than to not have you realize how ridiculously overpriced the service is.
The ROI on a DIY solution is under 2 years. I could buy a friend a complete NAS and my own and pay them $60/yr for letting me backup my NAS to theirs and still come out ahead in 2-3 years.
iDrive seems (for me) the most economical, but backblaze is in the running. Cloud backup (eg Google drive or Microsoft OneDrive or other general “cloud” storage) is out because their terms of service are specifically limited to “best effort” and not an offsite backup guarantee or service. And cloud sync is different than a backup.
I’m mulling over how to be able to do bare metal recovery on an arbitrary replacement PC (which will have its own windows license) and then overlay everything user-based, including system/administrator installed apps, since windows is a weird hybrid and it isn’t always clear which apps are which or how they install themselves.
And then there’s the “How do you include backing up phones and tablets?” problem.
@mike808 It would be expensive if I backed up each PC or drive separately, but I have all of the data I need backed up to one PC. That’s the one that I have backed up to Crashplan for the “worst-case-scenario” situation. It’s a 12 TB backup for $10/mo.
Overall, the price point is worth it to me for the security and reliability of this company, but of course everyone will have different needs and different value propositions.
@shahnm I see how that works, and right now I don’t use 5TB with full system backups now. I’m steadily moving towards that model of a central file share PC with the actual media/content of value, also.
That’s why I am looking at a NAS, but then I need to backup a NAS. And more importantly, likely will need a NAS to restore anything from that backup. Which isn’t a desired side-effect.
It’s why I kind of like EaseUS backup, since you can browse the backup just like file explorer and recover just what you need. I tried Clonezilla for a while, but you have to reassemble the split image files with a bunch of arcane linux wizardry which nobody except me in my family would be able to do if needed and I wasn’t around to provide IT support for it. The negative WAF was just a non-starter.
I hear that the Paragon backup is similar and gets bonus points for using a VHD container, making it easy to image and work with VMs. Not quite at the “everything is a container” Docker nirvana stage, but if it goes there, I wouldn’t be surprised.
But with no VM, AD, or Bitlocker support in Win10 Home, that’s a deal breaker.
@mike808 Just a side note - would you consider just upgrading your Win 10 to pro? That would give you some built in OS functionality that might make the rest of your considerations easier…
As far as NAS backups go (I’m assuming you’re talking about a RAID 0 setup with at least two drives?), the simplest thing to do is just plug a USB external drive into the NAS and let the NAS automatically backup to that. It’s a relatively inexpensive insurance policy against some weird NAS catastrophe.
@shahnm I’m not considering Win10Pro for all the machines. I’ve thought about it for the workhorse HTPC, but then the NAS doesn’t make sense.
The NAS with attached removable storage with shared media, and then backups to the NAS with NAS backups to the removable drive and copy the individual PC backups.
Then again, that’s kind of what I’ve hacked up with the main HTPC anyway.
There are “one password to rule them all” solutions
@Kris3211 And where/how do you backup your database of all those passwords protected by this “one password” solution? What happens when you pass on or are in a coma and your bills need to be paid or accounts closed?
LastPass, BitWarden, 1Password, Dashlane, etc help, but they are not a disaster recovery plan for your spouse or kids if you are suddenly called home to be with your deity of choice.
That’s part of my question - how are people backing up their different data and what tools products, and services they use to keep the backup safe and protected as well.
I just kinda have to wonder what would be on your phone that anyone but you would ever need access to?
I wouldn’t care about transferring my steam account or digital movies to anyone is not like those have any real value. Or that there’s not a reason to have a family account already if you want to. Games are so cheap after a few years.
Non private things like family pics there’s not much of a reason not to just share with family in an online album.
Windows 10 you have windows to go if needed
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/planning/windows-to-go-overview#differences-between-windows-to-go-and-a-typical-installation-of-windows
But again why would anyone not in your house want or need to restore a whole pc? You can’t overlay an install. Apps/programs/licenses will not work like that. To some extent you can overlay user settings but for anything like a base deployment build you need enterprise licenses for an the software. And not worth doing if you have a real backup.
Really you should have one encrypted folder synched to something like backblaze with critical stuff and that you can easily copy to physical media and every other pc should just be disaster recovery images of pcs. Encrypted with bitlocker if paranoid. Nice to have but not important.
401K/HSA/IRA/accounts in general all let you designate beneficiaries if you’re dead. Plus your will.
I really can’t think of anything that anyone would need a password of mine for. My password safe can die with me and they can make a new account. Or take my death certificate and will be on the list. But there are online ones as others have mentioned. Or the safe can be in that encrypted backup folder and only shared in your will
@unksol And if you’re in a coma or have dementia? Not every disaster that might befall you is death. And in many cases, that’s the only thing that triggers those transfers.
There are clearly different kinds of data with different backup and restore options. Not to mention technology has changed quite a bit, even from 5 years ago. That’s the experiment here - to update the models and tools and tasks for 2021.
As for my phone, well, my messages for starters. Although I did find SMS Backup+, a free ad-free app that backs up SMS messages to email. Nothing for MMS messages yet. I would say contacts too, but that’s all changed in the last few years. For the better, IMO.
By “overlay”, I mean to restore my apps and my settings and activation keys. Sure, I can reinstall apps from scratch, but they won’t preserve my settings or install plugins and activate premium features, etc that I had before a recovery/restore is needed.
And I’m sure my wife won’t know how I setup the VPN, firewall/AV, Plex server, automated OTA recording, ad removal, and transcoding to provide the easy-to-use system she’s accustomed to. And she doesn’t need to know/learn if I’ve done a good job with my backups and the recovery instructions for her when a drive fails or she wants to upgrade/replace them.
@mike808 you should have dependents set up for accounts and if you’re incapacitated I think your will still applies. But not a lawyer and password safes for immediate access. If you can’t trust them… With the key why would you trust them after when you can’t intervene? Worst case I guess put it in your will. You and your own lawyer won’t both die the same day. Never mind his whole firm. Rotate it.
I can’t even imagine why any one should ever have access to your messages? But my use case may be different. Maybe 2fA I guess for immediate access?wouldn’t you give that phone login to whoever you can trust? By definition they could never use it. unless you lost control of your phone. So if you have a rotating password in your will plan 8 two factor authentication on your phone?
Are you looking for a service other than lawyer who is bound by law to not release info? Unfortunately that does not exist
Third one. You can copy configuration/favorites/settings out of the app data user folder. BUT it’s never going to copy license keys or encrypted passwords etc. Things that a full windows backup and restore are designed to do.
If you are only using open source with no licences and she just has to login to nonsense bogus account with made up emails and passwords and point then at the correct paths maybe. Would still require a reinstall but maybe be able to copy in your settings. Until they update a version and break them
4th one a windows 10 backup reimage should put it back as is and probably will accommodate hardware/driver changes… They have done huge strides in that. But if it’s a whole new a machine it may or may not lock the windows license and start counting down till she calls in and asks to reactivate it.
@mike808 just in general if you’re wanting it to work the way it does for your wife today and she has no idea about the servers and backed network and routers and your hosting firewalls and vpn and plex. And OTA recording. That configuration is a massively different thing than restoring a single pc. If you have it all on one. And all you want to do is try and restore it. Maybe . Have you ever had her do a swap/restore before. Does she know how to replace a drive? Have you tested if a restore even works?
If you are planning on literally skydiving for fun… Now would be the time to find some local help. Cause even with a possible reimage it’s not going to fix itself
@unksol
That’s what I think the scenario will be. One of the PCs fails, and the solution is to pitch it, buy a $500 replacement and restore the image. That’s the goal.
Alternative 1 - house burgled, PC stolen. Buy a $500 replacement and restore the image.
Alternative 2 - house hit by tornado or burns or floods. Buy a $500 replacement and restore the image.
I’m trying to simplify the “Oh, crap! What do I do to put it back the way it was?” process for the wife or kids or relative (i.e. not me) that might need things to run without me for a while, and more importantly, I might not be dead, so my lawyer can’t help (and it’s not their job to be my household IT DR support) or the services/apps I use to run the household still need to continue working as if I “authorized” things or their transfer to someone else. Conveniently just before my incapacitation or untimely demise. So that the online stuff just keeps on keepin on with Steam or the lawn service or Netflix or even, dare I say, my VMP to give control to my loved ones. Things like cashing in all of your earned loyalty points/cash back with your different accounts. Companies live forever, so why not my online service accounts too?
That’s the goal, anyways. I can do complicated on the backup side if the restore side is simplified. And then automate the backup side.
So far, I’ve got 3 “backup” types.
critical - authentication info (passwords, 2FA secrets, one-time emergency passwords) with legal info (wills, trust docs, tax returns, statements, insurance docs, titles, etc). That’s on an encrypted thumb drive, make copies, keep in safe, with relatives, snd lawyer, updating/replacing annualy. With a copy of the yubikey 2FA to use to get access if needed.
Monthly images - this is what I’m working out here. For complete PC loss, and an easy and quick restore to service, maybe on a new PC.
daily backup/shared LAN (local network) storage for reinstalls and sharing files. That’s stuff like game media, Plex media, photos, etc. and changes somewhat rapidly - i.e. the constant online auto-updates.
There’s also stuff like the reference copies of app installers, manuals, receipts/invoices/orders/proof of purchase, and license keys. That’s currently being done with some thumb drives shared via my router (via Samba). That’s probably not the best, but it’s dead simple and easy. I remove them from the router, 7-zip them up onto the backup drive, and then plug them back in.