Cloud backup is a nice idea, but it’s hardly perfect. You never
really know where your data is on the cloud and even less about who
may be able to access it. Also, there is no real guarantee it will
always be there. Catastrophic failures
can happen at all levels,
local as well as world-wide.
There is nothing as trustworthy has having your data on hand in
a portable format, on a local hot-swap NAS or a tape cassette.
And, yes, you will need to protect them from floods, fires and
nuclear attacks. The big difference is whether
you are personally
involved with protecting the data that only you cares about.
Frankly, I think the cloud is very handy, but for permanent
storage, it’s way over-rated. We just haven’t seen any disasters yet.
Part of working with computers is having a healthy cynicism
about the ‘perfection’ of modern miracles and putting too much
trust in them.
From: xywrite-bounce@xxxxxxxx on behalf of J R FOX
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2019 11:23:59 AM
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: My lunch with Microsoft
Not to deny the value of Phil's approach in certain situations, I think you make
a good point: offsite backup is the way to go. What I favor is shuttling backup
images (made alternately -- for redundancy -- with Acronis and Shadow Protect,
which I think I learned about on this list) into safe-deposit box storage. From time
to time I also make whole clones of certain boot drives, for immediate drop-in
replacements in the event of hardware or OS disasters. And I've encountered
both, over the years.
I have little faith in the Cloud. I want to be the only one with possible access or control.
Apple users have good things to say about Time Machine -- or whatever that continuous
backup of everything via attached portable HDD is called. But that is not offsite backup.
Jordan
--------------------------------------------
On Fri, 2/15/19, Kari Eveli wrote:
Subject: Re: My lunch with Microsoft
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Date: Friday, February 15, 2019, 9:00 AM
Phil,
Your advice is solid. However, on a smaller
scale (as a one-man company) I have managed
to cover my needs for backup by buying a second hard disk
for each machine. The cost is minimal
compared to a NAS, and it has worked for
me. In addition, it is a good idea to have backups that are
not connected to the computer all the time.
Back in the days of IBM AT, I had a 44 MB
Bernoulli box, which was great at the time. Nowadays big
external hard disks are much less expensive and
a good fallback solution.
Best regards,
Kari Eveli
LEXITEC Book
Publishing (Finland)
lexitec@xxxxxxxx