What data do I consider important?
\nI had a backup scare a while ago, thinking I\u2019d lost several years\u2019 worth of photographs. It looks like I did have some level of backup, but not all of them were retrieved.
\nSo I suppose Photographs are one thing I feel I need to backup. What else?<\/p>\n
What kind of files am I even thinking of, I wonder? I haven\u2019t tried to write any short stories for years, and spreadsheets I created with Sarah to do things like plan chores don\u2019t really seem backup worthy.
\nPersonal projects, I suppose would count, so that would be the various little programming projects I\u2019ve started and abandoned in the last decade.
\nMy university work, and most importantly my 3rd year project. I worked hard on that, and even if it\u2019s unlikely I\u2019ll be ever doing anything with it again, it would be a shame to lose it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve got a lot of music files. A lot of these are ripped from CDs, and from my Parent\u2019s CDs. Some of these are files I recorded from records, some are things I was given by friends, some of it is Sarah\u2019s. Replacing the actual files would be a pain in the arse, re-ripping everything would take several days of solid work, and some of the CDs are in poor enough shape that I\u2019m not sure they\u2019d rip again anyway.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve made a few videos, just short personal things mostly. Most of these are on Youtube anyway, since that was the primary mechanism I was sharing things with friends anyway. But if I should lose my Google account, or google went under or something (not that it\u2019s likely to happen).<\/p>\n
A long time ago, a member of family asked me if I still liked Google. This was just after Google had started to really take off with their suite of applications, and Google Mail had started to become such a mainstream player.
\nAt the time, they were poking fun at my anti-Microsoft attitude and my dislike of massive IT companies. They were right to do so; I was probably the kind of person to spell Microsoft with a dollar sign.
\nBut as the years have gone on, it\u2019s difficult to ignore that Google (Alphabet) has become a deeply scary company.
\nEven if they weren\u2019t, it\u2019s probably pretty foolish to have so much of my identity tied to a single service, and it\u2019s also amazingly foolish to keep any important information in a free online service. I know, since I\u2019ve been that fool before: when Hotmail addresses were migrated to outlook.com addresses, any \u201cinactive\u201d accounts were purged of all old emails if no-one log in via web browser happened within a number of days. I\u2019d had that email address 10 years, and suddenly everything on it was gone. It\u2019d be daft to assume that Google never ever EVER has that kind of thing happen.
\nSo, I suppose I\u2019m a tech version of a prepper. There might already be a word for that, not sure. Hopefully I won\u2019t be suspected of being a new Unabomber or anything.
\nSo, my data.<\/p>\n
The saying goes \u201c3 copies, 2 mediums, 1 off site backup\u201d. Currently, as of writing, I have one \u201cmaster\u201d copy on my NAS, but that\u2019s only got a single hard drive in it. This means it barely qualifies as a NAS at this point. Sure, it\u2019s storage attached to the network, but only a fool would actually host data on it (Yeah I\u2019m a fool).
\nA 2nd hard drive has been ordered and dispatched from some enormous warehouse, so soon that single hard drive will be mirrored, making me a bit less foolish.
\nStill, that\u2019s only 1 medium. I\u2019ll need to think a bit about what might constitute a 2nd medium.
\nThe off-site backup is going to be handled in 2 ways. First of all, I\u2019ve subscribed to Crash Plan. I\u2019ve not actually uploaded any data to it yet, since it\u2019s been a bit tricky to set up on FreeNAS. This will be my cloud backup for now, although I\u2019m open to switching cloud backup providers at any point.
\nThe 2nd off site back up will be a similar NAS box running at my parents\u2019 house. I\u2019ll dedicate some time to getting that set up when I visit them at Christmas. It can store their data, and I\u2019ll rsync my data to it, and their data to mine.<\/p>\n
Well, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s really paranoia. But I\u2019m not going to be entrusting anything more to Google from now on, and I need to apply that retroactively to their services. This means I will need to get down from their servers everything I\u2019ve ever uploaded, and also take a copy of every email I\u2019ve ever sent or received through their services. This will all go into my backups as well.
\nI will also need to remove any DRM from any ebooks or films or music I\u2019ve ever bought from them too. This might be a bit tricky.
\nOf course, this won\u2019t happen overnight. I\u2019ve already begun migrating my emails away from Google, but I still use them as my primary contact for a lot of online services. Amazon for example, uses my Gmail login. I suppose I want to get things that are actually irreplaceable away from them, so that would mean family and friends can have my non-gmail related account, and all of the faceless companies that want my email address for spurious reasons can have the gmail one. In this fashion, I will fill my gmail inbox with SPAM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Data. What data do I consider important? I had a backup scare a while ago, thinking I\u2019d lost several years\u2019 worth of photographs. It looks like I did have some level of backup, but not all of them were retrieved. So I suppose Photographs are one thing I feel I… Continue reading