Back up options

[mmh8]

so its for my own business, but don't trust cloud storage system, prefer to have backups in 2 locations, office and home.

so which is it seagate or WD

[dddave]

If you search "External Hard Drive" in the IT forum, you will find many threads on this topic.

Edited December 15, 2015 by dddave

[Cloggie]

If you don't trust the Cloud, I would certainly not use e-mail and Internet, very dangerous with keyloggers, viruses, spyware, malware, ransomware, phishing mails etc etc

Although you don't trust the Cloud, just have a look at Crasplan - it makes the whole day backup's, never have to look at it and it saved my life already several times!

[RichCor]

If I want to maintain an offsite backup, you could easily use one of the 'services' listed in this Wikipedia entry: Comparison of online backup services

Though another alternative would be to implement your own remote sync system.

I once had fun setting up an rsync routine over a VPN with reporting capabilities.

A script was set to trigger at 2am every evening. rsync would run and compare the contents of selected directories against the remote system and automatically add, delete, or copy only file sections changed during the last rsync backup. A detailed report was automatically generated and then saved by dated-timestamp to a 'reports' directory so it could be searched or used for forensics.

The script was set to preserve the past 7 days, so duplicate directories existed on the remote system (and could be directly accessed Read Only over VPN if necessary). While all this occurred using one hard drive (and one drive does not a backup make!!), the contents and reports were also easily backed up to DVD once a week. Today I might consider PEN drives.

[BuaBS]

Sadly our choices are very limited. WD & Seagate and maybe Toshiba HDD's are the last companies standing. Recommendations differ from person to person , just use an independent encryption program , so that they can't see your data if your drive fails under waranty , or you lose it.

There are now SSD external drives too, more choice in brands , more expensive too.

Don't trust the cloud & encrytion from the drive manufactorers , they have backdoors for sure.

[cyberfarang]

I don`t believe there is a 100% secure way to backup our sensitive data. I also don`t trust storing my material online that can be hacked or nobbled.

I store my backups on my computer, external hard drives and memory sticks and have my online banking account details printed out on paper and put in a safe place. That`s about all you can do.

[Chicog]

Why don't you just backup to a local disk, encrypt it and then back up the encrypted file?

Edited December 15, 2015 by Chicog

[Chicog]

^I meant to say back up the encrypted file to Dropbox or whatever?

[mmh8]

Thanks for replies, I know how easy it is to have info accessed if it is on the net. So no cloud for me, including dropbox.

Encrypted cloud back up does sound interesting actually.

encrypt and store in cloud.

email and internet traffic is easily seen by any interested parties. this is why I have my doubts about storing files , what if someone does the ransom thing even if they don't see it.

[Chicog]

Thanks for replies, I know how easy it is to have info accessed if it is on the net. So no cloud for me, including dropbox.

Encrypted cloud back up does sound interesting actually.

encrypt and store in cloud.

email and internet traffic is easily seen by any interested parties. this is why I have my doubts about storing files , what if someone does the ransom thing even if they don't see it.

The ransomware thing is normally done on your PC by malware, either from an email attachment or a watering hole attack, so having an offsite (and offline) backup would actually be very useful if your whole PC got encrypted.

Or you could just use it as a second level backup.

Ransomware tends to encrypt everything it can find, and that includes attached drives and network shares.

I've had WD external drives running 24/7 for three years now with no sign of any problem.

Edited December 16, 2015 by Chicog