datahoarder
Who are we?
We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.
We are one. We are legion. And we're trying really hard not to forget.
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I only buy used drives. The money I save from buying and using them is more than enough to backup everything multiple times. I personally think a new drive but only one back up is not safe.
Other thought, if you want to be seriously safe about your backup you should put it at your parents house or work in case something happens to yours.
You could just plug them into your server or computer and move them there. Also, a server doesn't need to be expensive. You could just buy a used optiplex for 40$.
Used all the way. I haven't looked at prices recently but I have gotten 8TB SAS drives for $40 each. Hard to beat that.
That’s about what I pay too :)
I originally got my used drives from an electronic recycling company. They were selling them around 3-5$ per TB.
Then I got a ton of my sysadmin family member.
Just use Tailscale on the devices instead of VPN. Secure and no faffing around with port forwarding.
@droolio @Galapagon
Tailscale literally is a VPN.
More than just a traditional VPN. @[email protected] was concerned about security and it being always-on. Tailscale is an overlay network that links devices directly, deals with authentication, punching holes through NAT.
Why no VPN? It is what the tech is for, making a private Network between places.
If you are both behind cgnat then you will need a third place to relay through like a dirt cheap VM or VPS.
It'd have to be always up, essentially merging our networks. I thought it'd be better to keep them separate for security.
A VPN doesn't have to merge networks, you can still keep them as 2 separate broadcast domains. like your house could be 192.168.1.0/24 while your parents could be 192.168.5.0/24
Thanks for the recommendations, especially used drives. I was looking at water panther drives because of their warranty. Do you have a preferred source?
That's a fair point about off-site backups. Though as this point, any backups at all would be much better than what I've got. Baby steps 🤷♂️
Plug them in and move them there? Sorry I'm confused. Cold backups have to be disconnected and unpowered, right? I could keep them bare, and plug them into a dock sequentially, but what does that look like on the software side?
And yeah, my needs are very light. A used optiplex would be plenty. Right now I'm using an m920q with an 8th Gen i5. While it doesn't have drive bays, it idles at like 10 watts, full tilt is 25. Plus it's small and silent, I'm in an apartment.
I'm not opposed to upgrading in the future, I guess I just want to get a handle on some basics with what I have, before I decide what I want.
I mean I've got a spare computer sitting around with a 2600x in it, that could be a server pretty easy, maybe I'll look into that 🤔
At any rate, what do you think about the software side of things? Specifically the basic procedure for updating cold backups?
https://serverpartdeals.com/ Is frequently recommended as reliable and with a good warranty. When I first started I got my from a local electronics recycler with only a 30 day warranty. I was only caring about price. Now I’m just using bigger used ones. My only warranty is them being cheap to free and backing up data multiple places.
I agree it’s a bigger step. I currently only have one at my office and it took me forever to get around to setting it up.
I mean just plug them in to your computer or server then move your data. If it was me I would rsync-avz source destination the data :)
An Optiplex only has one maybe two bays. But the low power and cost are worth it!
I think it really doesn’t matter what hardware you have as long as it won’t randomly break.
Maybe I’ll give my specific example. I have a QNAP 1u server that was given to me so I decided to use it as a cold backup. I turn it on once a week and then ssh into my main servers and rsync important data into their respective locations on the QNAP.
If I was making a new system I would make a fedora server 41 usb, install that to a new system using the gui, restart it and ssh in to setup my folder structure, then rsync ally stuff there and be done :) Would probably take less than 30-60 minutes to setup