Naming a new hard drive...

@earlyre This is TOO EASY!! Just name the Purple one @Barney !!

/image purple dinosaur

@Barney @IndifferentDude
as much as I may like our @barney…
that character is just… no…
but as a classic Mopar fan…
Plum Crazy? In-Violet? FC7?
actually… I kinda like FC7…

@medz but do i want my computer to gain sentience?

@earlyre @medz Nope, then they start asking for weekends off, and 40 hour work weeks.

@replicacobra just no.

@earlyre @replicacobra Maybe BIGAPRON drive if you want it to be a bit less conspicuous?

KuoH

@yakkoTDI no different than prior setup… Just consolidating 2 drives into 1.
And you’re assuming that I don’t have some sort of external backup…

Assuming correctly, but not entirely the point…

@earlyre @yakkoTDI
I almost commented that I’ve stopped buying drives bigger than 4TB because the backups were getting impractical.

I’ve also gone down in size for the boot partition - 120GB seems right for me.

I’ve moved my software depot (installation copies, manuals, receipts, license documents, etc) to a standalone 240GB SSD in an external shell hosted by my router as a poor man’s NAS.

The only big drive, a 4TB, is dedicated for media (OTA TV recordings) and game installations, which are huge these days. I think it’s the only mechanical drive in use besides the backup drives, which are currently 8TB externals, but trying to bring down to 5TB 2.5" externals.

Cloud backups are just not part of my off-site backup plan for several reasons, the biggest is that a cloud service is a subscription service contract between me and the provider.

Cloud service/storage contracts end when I die, and the cloud storage provider has no contractual obligation to grant access to my data to my survivors or my estate. Even to download and transfer to some other provider (even if they weren’t using a proprietary backup client), nor to continue service, nor to honor my pricing if I locked in a good deal.

All of which makes doing my own backups and keeping them offsite/protected (a data safe is critical) the best option for me given media and backup technologies available today.

@earlyre @yakkoTDI
Finding a data safe is a different problem, as safe makers seem to have four main protection features, theft, fire, flood, and data. However, there is literally nothing in the market for general consumers in the under $2000 range that can help with more than 2 of those things at a time. They’re usually fire rated, but worthless protecting from theft, or theft rated, but worthless protecting from fire. And if you have data, fire is the most critical one, because normal fire safes are rated for not burning paper. Electronics, like backup drives and plastics, are destroyed at those temperatures (450+). Hence data safes.

Then in a fire, the damage to surviving electronics is done by the water and smoke mixing to become acidic (remember acid rain?) which permeates everything and destroys the electronics. So you need sealing waterproof features.

Lastly, data safes are usually not designed to deter physical theft, (so you can also store other valuables, duh) so that makes finding a combo safe nigh impossible, and not cheap.

@earlyre @mike808 @yakkoTDI good info on fire safe thanks. Cold storage off-site is your next step here then.

@earlyre @LJeAYsy4LoqxEC @yakkoTDI
You can get data safes from the usual places (Sentry, etc.) but they’re definitely not going to be protection from theft and possibly not watertight.

Because in a fire, they will protect from the heat, but they will fail when the fire department hoses the place down and smoke and water get into your data safe with hard drives in plastic enclosures and thumb drives inside.

And they’re not designed to keep people from just taking the whole thing. Data safes are designed to keep important stuff safe from fire, not keeping people from just carrying the whole thing out in a burglary. They also usually look like they contain something important/valuable, so you might as well put a big sign saying “TAKE ME” on it. Funny thing, that’s what she said.

For example, you might be looking at the IOSafe 6TB (https://iosafe.com/products/solo-g3/). It weighs 15 pounds. Trivial to unplug, disconnect, and walk out with your backups. I hope they’re encrypted, btw. The same goes for your NAS.

That still doesn’t solve the problem of things like a portable recovery thumbdrive with scans of all of your critical legal documents (homeowner’s policy and deed!) and master passwords to your password managers and extra copies of those Yubikey 2FA (2-Factor Authentication) tokens to use when you have to bug out or a disaster hits and your home is a smoking, flooded, crater.

@earlyre @LJeAYsy4LoqxEC @yakkoTDI
In the end, I chose a Hollon safe with a data insert. It is a reasonably good fire/theft safe, and it just gets a lot smaller when they put the data safe insert (basically extra fire protection) inside their regular safe. Fire safes are rated for paper not catching fire (~450°F). For example, you might see a claim like:

UL Fire Endurance testing keeps interior temperatures below 350°F (177°C) for up to 30 minutes.

Data or media safes are rated for lower interior temperatures to keep plastic and electronics from melting. An example is from FireKing. https://www.fireking.com/products/safes/data-safes/1-hour-ds-series-safe

Their claim is a “UL class 125 1-hour fire rating” meaning the interior temperature is kept below 125°F. I’m pretty sure that baking your hard drive or NAS in the oven for 20 minutes at 350°F will ruin it. So, not cool if your backup is on one and fire is the threat you’re protecting against, and you’ve put it in one of the everyday big-box anti-theft or even an anti-fire safe.

For options, I recommend starting your search here:
https://www.safeandvaultstore.com/collections/data-media-safes

Here’s a picture of the one I have (I removed the shelves to put documents in it too):

@earlyre It is easier than you think. I am building a low powered server to keep at my nephew’s house on the other side of the state. It will have 2 drives in Raid 1 which will be either 10 or 12 terabytes each.

Since I primarily run Windows machines I just use Robocopy for my backups. The initial data copy is the hard part but after that my script only copies the files that have changed. I can schedule the script to run or manually trigger it if needed.

As for my multiple Raspberry Pi computers I don’t store anything on them I would really miss due to data loss. Mostly it is files already backed up elsewhere.

Cost wise shouldn’t be too bad outside of the drive cost. Splurging on good fans and a high end power supply everything but the drives should be less than $300 for my server.

…and your buddy has to be willing to let you open a port on their network (or not know what that means).

@earlyre I’ve thought about that before, but at $7/month unlimited, Backblaze Catblaze might be the way to go.

https://www.backblaze.com/catblaze.html

@walarney if not him, my brother ( an honest to goodness IT professional) lives just a few miles from me, and has basically a mini data center in one of his bedrooms…

@macromeh
Or Fred. I had a sledgehammer that I named “Fred”.

@macromeh @werehatrack nah… Cousin named Frank, whose Dad is Fred…nah.
I did used to have a car named “Bob”

@carl669 a Carl post without a fuck?
Whatthefuckisupwiththat?

@earlyre it’s been a long fucking day

@ybmuG