New Mac advice - is flash storage reliable?

[brentsg]

Edit: Another great trick with Apple is to buy from the online refurb store. The stuff will look (and smell!) brand new but come in a plain white box with the same warranty as new. Usually it's a 15% discount.

There's always a stigma attached to refurbished anything that makes me avoid it. But 15% off of $1300 isn't bad. Tell me more!

I don't think there's anything more to tell really. I've never known anyone to buy an Apple refurb and be able to tell it's anything aside from brand new. I've picked up iPods (heh), Macbook Pro's, Macbook Airs, even a Mac Pro as refurb. I'm with you on the general avoidance, but there's really nothing to avoid. Worst case scenario it's a one-off and you simply return it. I've honestly never heard of anyone needing to do that and I spend plenty of time trolling various forums.

On the US store, you just scroll to the bottom of the website and click "refurbished and clearance". If the config you want is OOS, there's even an app out there that checks constantly and lets you know when it's available. It lets you configure RAM, storage, etc for the model you want. One thing that does happen from time to time is that people get free CPU/RAM/storage/video card upgrades b/c they get lucky and are sent a unit that had some built to order option.

Edit: On the US site, October 13 units with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD are $1189. If you want the one that JUST released you'll have to wait a bit.

[Skykid]

Very interesting. I'll have to see if Hong Kong have a similar system. Thanks for the info.

[ZellSF]

Yeah without offsite backups you definitely have a real risk of data loss. I don't get it, it's fairly trivial to encrypt a disk, copy over your most important stuff to it and leave it to someone you trust. Alternatively, leave it at work or use a cloud service.

Your backup does not need to be constantly updated 24/7 nor does it need to be constantly accessed. Just occasional integrity checks and making new backups if they fail.

I'm also really confused as to someone claiming to take privacy and security seriously (Ed Oscuro) and not being knowledgeable about modern encryption. If you care about privacy and security every storage device that leaves your house for any reason should be encrypted.

I can only understand not keeping proper backups if the data isn't important or it's a severe budget issue (hardly applies to someone buying a Mac)


Edit: oh and SSD drives have a long lifetime. You have to be seriously trying to kill them with write cycles. You're far more likely to kill a regular HDD with mechanical failure in the same time frame. I'm not sure why people are concerned with this. There's no tests that indicate it will be a problem, there's no reports if it having been a problem. It seems like someone with an agenda made it up and people that fear new technology just went with it.

Unless you're running a multipurpose server, do not worry about it. SSDs more commonly fail due to controller issues.

[Skykid]

Edit: oh and SSD drives have a long lifetime. You have to be seriously trying to kill them with write cycles. You're far more likely to kill a regular HDD with mechanical failure in the same time frame. I'm not sure why people are concerned with this.

Thanks to this thread I'm not anymore. I have had SD cards where data has been corrupted or rendered irretrievable intermittently and for no good reason. That's really the only reasone I questioned it since I've never owned a laptop with in-built flash drive storage.

[Ed Oscuro]

I'm also really confused as to someone claiming to take privacy and security seriously (Ed Oscuro) and not being knowledgeable about modern encryption. If you care about privacy and security every storage device that leaves your house for any reason should be encrypted.

The simple answer to your complaint is that very quickly the additional measures a person can take for "data security" come with diminishing returns - and also may come with specific disadvantages. In my case, I simply don't care to transfer my files over the internet, Encrypted or not. There's no getting beyond that. Of course, this won't hold for everybody else. There's also competing preferences (how much do I want to pay for off-site backup if it provides no tangible value to me, and additionally if that's money I could instead spend on faster, probably more useful fast local storage?). This isn't to say you don't make a good point - but sometimes the answer can come back that encryption and offsite backup isn't the right answer. FOR EXAMPLE: Known hoarders / traders of illegal files get essentially no benefit from encrypting files, lol, because the Justice Department brings down their door and says you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. And even if you aren't doing anything ethically or morally wrong, you still have signified you have no expectation of privacy from the moment you put the garbage at the side of the road.

You're still right: There are cases where encryption is an obvious value. Nobody in this day and age would tolerate having their login net traffic or their browser's password files unencrypted.

But try as I might, I don't see where I would want to send large bunches of files elsewhere which I wouldn't be able to publicly stand by. If it's just my passwords, I'll write that shit down.

If it's embarrassing information (pictures of good times with friends your significant other doesn't want you to hang out with anymore, for example) and thus should be obscured, then you need to rethink the problem. Use a psuedonym instead of, or perhaps in addition to, encryption, or just don't put the files online, or destroy them, maybe.

If it's financially compromising, then my preference is definitely on the "never let it out of my sight" side of things. If I'm not dealing with an institution known to have already backed-up and encrypted the information, I just keep the paper trail. And even then, this is one of those points where we're always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I don't put zero credence in the security and lifespan of The Cloud, but it doesn't seem to offer me much value, either.

If it's a large bunch of files I want to save - well, there's all kinds of ways of handling that. The stuff I did for the Contra HQ (very little really) is not an appropriate target for encryption. That can be freely passed back and forth. Ditto my camera files: I'm not going to put the RAW files (since the metadata can be forged) anywhere without guarantees - the kind of guarantees that data backup procedures don't address - that the files will still be credited to me.

If the argument is that we should spend real money on robust offsite backups - I'd point out that for me (but not for everybody), having the fastest local file I/O possible is more valuable, and I can get that while also getting a new hedge against data loss. Therefore, I am going to save up for a newer disk leapfrogging my older disk (using them as mutual backups of each other) gives me better value. If the criticism of this is that all the data is going to be blown up at once - if I expected some event to occur which would destroy all my backups, I'd spend my effort and money on making sure my hardware was in good condition, that the disks' SMART returns are healthy, and that my walls and roof are good and secure. If I thought that I was going to lose my house in an earthquake or fire...I'd be thinking about getting the hell outta Dodge.

For me, at least, a new disk is overwhelmingly likely to be a better value. I don't run a RAID, but my thinking goes along the lines of probabilities in similar ways. The only thing I'd caution is that, certainly with SSDs, one needs to make sure that your backups won't all be subject to a single point of failure - plugging multiple SSDs into the same failing computer data port could possibly corrupt them all.

Edit: oh and SSD drives have a long lifetime. You have to be seriously trying to kill them with write cycles.

Depends on the scenario. Aside from the link I posted earlier about power-loss related corruption - which is still a big potential problem for many drives, especially given the high parallelism of these drives scattering the data across the physical layout of the SSD - there's still not as big a MTBF advantage for SSDs as people might think. This might still be an issue if you have to keep your computer parts in service for many years. Enterprise drives are a different matter than consumer drives because they have both very long usage in hours and also much higher sustained and lifetime transfers - even so, only recently have SSDs overtaken mechanical drives in the MTBF category. The MTBF stat is mentioned [url=http://www.storagereview.com/ssd_vs_hdd]in this article[/i], which I posted earlier.

[ZellSF]

The simple answer to your complaint is that very quickly the additional measures a person can take for "data security" come with diminishing returns - and also may come with specific disadvantages.

Simple encryption comes with no diminishing returns and no disadvantages and perfectly addresses the issue of privacy of off-site data, which was the specific point you made that I had problems with.

This isn't to say you don't make a good point - but sometimes the answer can come back that encryption and offsite backup isn't the right answer. FOR EXAMPLE: Known hoarders / traders of illegal files get essentially no benefit from encrypting files, lol, because the Justice Department brings down their door and says you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. And even if you aren't doing anything ethically or morally wrong, you still have signified you have no expectation of privacy from the moment you put the garbage at the side of the road.

Name one (real) scenario where having a properly encrypted off-site backup has ever been a problem for anyone.

If I thought that I was going to lose my house in an earthquake or fire...I'd be thinking about getting the hell outta Dodge.

(or your stuff stolen)... This isn't things you plan for! It's still stuff that can happen. You don't keep backups for events you plan for, but the ones you do not.

I'd spend my effort and money on making sure my hardware was in good condition, that the disks' SMART returns

FYI: a HDD will usually fail before triggering any SMART alerts. Relying on it in any way for checking disk integrity is terrible practice.

And if you're implying what I think you are (that you keep your backup HDDs in the same computer for fast I/O), that's also terrible practice. A power issue can kill both drives, easily. Hell, a software issue can wipe all the data on them too.

Depends on the scenario. Aside from the link I posted earlier about power-loss related corruption - which is still a big potential problem for many drives, especially given the high parallelism of these drives scattering the data across the physical layout of the SSD

Why do you keep replying to me with stuff that has nothing to do with what I've said? I've accounted for the scenarios in which write cycles can kill a SSD (servers). Power-loss is a huge killer of regular HDDs, so I really wouldn't bring it up when saying SSDs aren't reliable. If you live in an area where that's a problem I really recommend a UPS.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hardware encryption is still an evolving technology. I won't avoid it when it starts to become ubiquitous, but we're not there yet.

Where are you coming down on power issues? On the one hand you show no awareness at all about power outages killing (yes, killing!) SSDs, which to me signifies that investing in a power backup goes very high up the list of buying priorities - even before buying a second drive or fiddling around with off-site storage.

On the other hand, having a "power problem" that zaps different drives on different ports of the computer at the same time is a rare event. It's much more likely that you just get one drive failure, or the motherboard fails in some other way that doesn't damage the drives. Am I aware that there is nevertheless some increased potential for failure here? Of course, I wasn't born yesterday! But when it comes to things I'd prioritize, this is not super high on the list.

But yes, I do agree that physically isolating copies of your saved files from daily use is a good thing. I hope to be able to do this someday soon, and my strategy is basically the leapfrog one, with out-of-daily-service-but-good drives having backups, to be replaced by in-service drives. The only thing here is that the backup drive or system has to be in good shape to serve meaningfully as a backup to the main one, and of course hot-swapping isn't easy or smart to do willy-nilly.

When we're just talking about some text files or passwords, the ol' flash drive works well enough for 99% of cases.

You make an interesting point about SMART usefulness - Google's old data release does point towards SMART not always useful. Again, this points towards the importance of cyling components out of service fairly regularly (within a period of some years) if you want reliability. It's just too bad this is expensive to do. And climate and form factor seem to matter: My climate-controlled workstation space in Michigan is totally different than somebody banging around their laptop in a hot room and leaving it (and their drive) on the sofa or bed. Of course, an old drive (particularly flash) doesn't seem to have much problems with a shelf life, if it's only being used as a backup. I'll feel better about doing this once SSD prices on big drives come down, however.

About offsite backup - I'm aware that the headlines can distort the safety issues here, but again, I simply don't see that the benefits are as good as what you claim. For me (not for everybody, of course), this is just an additional source of potential (if very small) leaks and certainly a time drain. I'd rather just mirror files locally. I sure am not going to spend all my bandwidth uploading 16GB of files every time I use my camera intensively though. If money and upload time was no issue, I'd consider it, though. This will and should change, but even with a new DOCSIS 3.0 modem, Comcast only gives so much speed.

[ZellSF]

Hardware encryption is still an evolving technology. I won't avoid it when it starts to become ubiquitous, but we're not there yet.

Who was talking about hardware encryption? I wasn't. There are lots of good software solutions. Encryption isn't some future technology, it's stuff that works now.

Where are you coming down on power issues? On the one hand you show no awareness at all about power outages killing (yes, killing!) SSDs, which to me signifies that investing in a power backup goes very high up the list of buying priorities - even before buying a second drive or fiddling around with off-site storage.

If power fails and you have a backup, you've lost nothing except a little bit of money.
If you have only one drive and it fails, you've lost critical data.

Prioritizing stable power supply to one drive over getting a second one makes no sense from a data integrity point of view.

I didn't say power failures didn't kill SSDs, I just said they're far more likely to kill a mechanical drive so it's a weird point to bring up as a negative point for SSDs.

About offsite backup - I'm aware that the headlines can distort the safety issues here, but again, I simply don't see that the benefits are as good as what you claim. For me (not for everybody, of course), this is just an additional source of potential (if very small) leaks and certainly a time drain. I'd rather just mirror files locally. I sure am not going to spend all my bandwidth uploading 16GB of files every time I use my camera intensively though. If money and upload time was no issue, I'd consider it, though. This will and should change, but even with a new DOCSIS 3.0 modem, Comcast only gives so much speed.

Again, you do not need to constantly update your backup, nor does offsite has to mean online. I update my backup every 3 months, it involves getting the drive, connecting it and hitting "do backup job". What a massive time drain.

Minor stuff gets uploaded to the cloud automatically. So practically no effort and if something happens I've lost some data from the last three months at most as opposed to losing who knows how much critical data from way back.

And again, no potential at all for leaks if you encrypt your stuff properly.

[brentsg]

My crashplan keeps 2 archives. One is encrypted and offsite. It doesn't take as much as you think to upload this on a daily basis, and you can seed the initial upload if you choose. I'm doing this easily with 3Mb/s up. The second archive is also maintained by crashplan, but this one is fast and onsite.

You can also selectively decide what to archive at each location, as well as configuring things that control when each process can run, how much bandwidth can be allocated, etc.

[Ed Oscuro]

Prioritizing stable power supply to one drive over getting a second one makes no sense from a data integrity point of view.

That's because you've decided to obsess only over one aspect of the broader issue. When Skykid asks if flash is reliable, he's talking about this from a consumer's point of view. Not having some stable power supply means that you're risking your entire computer investment. I'd also like to see your source for the assertion that power failures are "far more likely to kill a mechanical drive" (?!) when the failure mechanism - killing precision components on the drive's logic board - should be close identical across each type. A mechanical drive losing power just puts it into its emergency shutdown mode, where it uses rotational energy to shut down safely. Again, many SSDs still don't have any adequate protection against this possibility. A power spike could hit either type of drive with equal frequency - and in any case, historically mechanical drives often enough die from obviously mechanical causes.

Even so I'd agree that having some extra storage as soon as possible is a good idea - for most users, we're probably talking a thumb drive.

Again, you do not need to constantly update your backup, nor does offsite has to mean online. I update my backup every 3 months, it involves getting the drive, connecting it and hitting "do backup job". What a massive time drain.

Well, that clarifies things perfectly. So I go to my chalet and drop the drives off there? And your magical online backup only covers you in 3 month increments? Well, I'm not willing to lose under 3 months of files. I like brentsg's plan better - daily uploads that are automated. My inner luddite is quite attuned to the fact that there are plenty of technologies out there that promote some marginal utility or other, yet life continues to go on without them. You're not big on having a UPS and quality hardware to stave off failures; I am. You're big on having protection against threats that would level a whole house; I'm not so worried about all my files surviving beyond me, at the moment (someday).

I think online storage is a great thing - I've been using it for over a decade in some capacity or other - but at (say) $9.99 a month, cloud storage starts to get damn expensive for serious work. From what I can tell, Dropbox's rates aren't competitive at all with buying your own drive - if space is at issue. Which, for me, it is. It looks, instead, like the major value proposition that would have for me is the ability to access files from anywhere, without needing to carry drives - that'd be great for some users, but I don't need it at the moment. Additionally, that $9.99/month is only good for 100GB, which is the equivalent of maybe the year's airshow photos for me - i.e., four days or so of concentrated shooting. 16GB memory cards (currently I carry 40GB of cards with me) add up in a hurry. Dropbox's 500GB option works out to a crazy $499.99 per year. For that price, I'd buy my own NAS (and probably I should)!

Minor stuff gets uploaded to the cloud automatically.

Which, for most people, is already routine and invisible. Email is in the cloud, my forum account here is in the cloud - of course there are plenty of things a person can and already does host online. So in many cases there's really no need to advocate "the cloud" for backup anyways - people already expect stuff they put online (on their FB wall, in their email, or hosted on a filesharing site) will stay there.

[ZellSF]

That's because you've decided to obsess only over one aspect of the broader issue. When Skykid asks if flash is reliable, he's talking about this from a consumer's point of view. Not having some stable power supply means that you're risking your entire computer investment

Wait. Earlier you thought a power supply issue taking out two hard drives was unlikely, but you're worried about it taking out all the components in a computer now?

And yes, I am obsessing about one aspect. Data integrity. You can get a new computer, years of pictures or work is not something you can get back.

Worrying about the computer itself isn't talking about the reliability of flash storage though, so no clue why you bring up Skykid, especially considering he's getting a laptop which already has all the preventive measures for that you could want.

Well, that clarifies things perfectly. So I go to my chalet and drop the drives off there? And your magical online backup only covers you in 3 month increments? Well, I'm not willing to lose under 3 months of files. I like brentsg's plan better - daily uploads that are automated.

Which you said you didn't want to do, which is why I mentioned there are alternatives. Maybe you don't, but many people have access to some locked container of some sort at work or a relative's house.

Maybe you're not satisfied with a 3 month backup, but is it really worse than no offsite backup at all?

[Ed Oscuro]

That's because you've decided to obsess only over one aspect of the broader issue. When Skykid asks if flash is reliable, he's talking about this from a consumer's point of view. Not having some stable power supply means that you're risking your entire computer investment

Wait. Earlier you thought a power supply issue taking out two hard drives was unlikely, but you're worried about it taking out all the components in a computer now?

Only if you try to sneak a fast one past me and mix the different terms here. This has become somewhat tangled due to the rather halfassed way we've discussed this. Still, this doesn't seem like rocket science.

If you have ONE SSD, and it doesn't have power outage protection, you really really should get a battery backup that can keep supplying power to it. Laptops with batteries should be fine here. This is a pretty widely reported issue, but you've explicitly stated that it's no concern.

If you have multiple drives plugged into your computer - yes, it's just not credible in my experience to say that this represents a major failure risk for the drives. Most drives go into sleep states. The main thing to watch out for is that you aren't mixing old and new components. But, now that I think about it, you can probably get away most of the time with having identical drives as mutual backups - though I would prefer not to do that.

If you have dirty power, ever experience lightning or line spikes (who ever heard of a thing like that?!), or a poor quality power supply - you are risking the possibly expensive parts of your machine. This isn't just about "killing the hard drives" (your words) but rather about protecting any random part of the computer. It's more likely the network port will pop, but protecting the ENTIRE computer does cover the hard drives, as you seem to have guessed.

And yes, I am obsessing about one aspect. Data integrity. You can get a new computer, years of pictures or work is not something you can get back.

Maybe you're not satisfied with a 3 month backup, but is it really worse than no offsite backup at all?

Again, you've tried to cut out all the substance of my argument, which is that it's not worth the bother - and, looking at the Dropbox costs, definitely not worth the costs - for protection against events which would probably kill me if they managed to destroy all my data in multiple devices, at which point my photos can just do whatever. (This said, some of my certitude about data security comes down to factors that I haven't enumerated, so the skepticism is not entirely unwarranted.)

At the end of the day, you're not making a sale here. We've put the information out on the table and had a good discussion but this is veering into "I can't let you do what you're going to do" territory. I'm not going to do something different here, for the reasons that I'm proficient enough to administer my own disk cluster / NAS, don't think that the cloud backup costs are in order for the cost I'd get, and don't think I'd benefit from the online points at this stage. Like I've said repeatedly - this is just me and you really don't have to fight me on it. Skykid, and others, hopefully can glean something of value out of the points being raised, but beyond this point it's not useful for guidance anymore.

[ZellSF]

If you have ONE SSD, and it doesn't have power outage protection, you really really should get a battery backup that can keep supplying power to it. Laptops with batteries should be fine here. This is a pretty widely reported issue, but you've explicitly stated that it's no concern.

No I haven't. I stated that is isn't more of a problem with SSDs than it is with HDDs, and I believe the problem to be worse with HDDs (admittingly more from personal experience, I've had two HDDs die of mechanical failure after power loss).

Again, you've tried to cut out all the substance of my argument, which is that it's not worth the bother - and, looking at the Dropbox costs, definitely not worth the costs

What? I've addressed that argument several times, trying to show ways in which it's neither a bother or a huge cost. There's all sorts of scalable solutions to every possible situation you could have.

for protection against events which would probably kill me if they managed to destroy all my data in multiple devices

Fire and theft most frequently happen when you're not at home.

At the end of the day, you're not making a sale here. We've put the information out on the table and had a good discussion but this is veering into "I can't let you do what you're going to do" territory. I'm not going to do something different here, for the reasons that I'm proficient enough to administer my own disk cluster / NAS, don't think that the cloud backup costs are in order for the cost I'd get, and don't think I'd benefit from the online points at this stage. Like I've said repeatedly - this is just me and you really don't have to fight me on it. Skykid, and others, hopefully can glean something of value out of the points being raised, but beyond this point it's not useful for guidance anymore.

You're publicly advocating bad policies for data integrity. That needs to be challenged. I'm not trying to sell you on good backup policies, I'm trying to sell everyone reading on it.

[Ed Oscuro]

You're advocating buying a sledgehammer to kill a fly, as far as most peoples' concerns go, and potentially spending money where it is least effective for a person's needs. As I said, there are already lots of cloud things people use on a regular basis.

That online backup should always be looked into - yes, I agree with that. There's no sense closing off options before they're considered, and online backups aren't bad in of themselves. Naturally!

Of course Skykid especially should look into some kind of cloud storage in large part because he might move frequently and lose something. Hopefully the pricing structure is right for his photos: If I had photographs in JPG format, instead of RAW, my own judgment about the price effectiveness of services for me would likely change, because I'd need an order of magnitude less space for storage.

For somebody who is just saving some personal text documents or what-have-you, it's pretty clear that their major financial concern is going to be on not having their expensive computer blow up. You totally ignore these kinds of personal factors. Thankfully online backup should be free in that case, so that reduces the impact of choosing online backup so far that it becomes the obvious choice. And additionally this kind of user can likely store files across a variety of small thumb drives, too. (And for the sake of reasonableness towards online backups, it's easy to imagine cases where online backup shines - such as if you have to limit chances of physical loss and thus can't just throw thumb drives around willy-nilly, but can use a secure online backup service.)

It's the case where somebody has just collected a huge amount of data, doesn't need many of the specific benefits of cloud backup, and has to prioritize their own equipment over backup, where I find your one-size-fits-all-only-backups-matter thinking breaks down heavily. If somebody is a photographer for a local paper, for example, or they render stuff on their own computer - they make their living off their local equipment. These kinds of freelancers typically don't make a lot of money off their stored files. If there is something they are going to prioritize pursuing to the utmost, it's not the nicety of historical accumulation. It's protecting the investment that they use every day.

You've been really reluctant to share any facts on the sheer probabilities of data loss, in large part because failure rates are corporate secrets and vary from brand and device, so we can argue into the next millennium without any hard evidence over this - but it's still clear the chance of losing all of one's files, if they're stored on multiple devices locally, is very low for many people. For every additional storage device they add, they reduce the chances of failure even further, and with the cloud data rates I'm seeing today, the extra drive is going to let them get a lot more effectiveness out of their dollar, and improves their chances of just keeping their computer running, and additionally may well come in well below a price where they simply cannot afford the online service. (Depending on what you pay, you also might not ever get your files backed up in a timely fashion anyway, and some cloud backup services are vague about what happens if you suddenly find yourself unable to pay for the continued backup.)

Of course somebody should consider online storage if it's feasible. But there's still apparently cases where, thus far, online backups are just too costly to consider. I hope this starts to change (I noticed a new article stating that Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are now commencing a price war on cloud storage pricing - which I hope will shortly help people like me get a better value out of online services).
Your focus on encryption for all files is probably more baffling. It offers no apparent benefit to spend my machine's time encrypting a bunch of innocuous landscape photos in a lengthy process on my own machine, when the files will be saved at both ends behind secure devices, and they get encrypted at their most vulnerable points (transmission and at the cloud storage service) anyways.

[niall]

Just get a USB HD which you plugin regularly, or a Time Machine, and set and forget the backups.

[brentsg]

You've been really reluctant to share any facts on the sheer probabilities of data loss, in large part because failure rates are corporate secrets and vary from brand and device, so we can argue into the next millennium without any hard evidence over this - but it's still clear the chance of losing all of one's files, if they're stored on multiple devices locally, is very low for many people.

Perhaps it's just where you are in life, but where I am it has to be zero or near zero. I'm not interested in probability, except to know that if catastrophe strikes I won't lose any electronic data. Things I can't lose are archived electronically, period. A lot of what I don't want to lose was electronic to begin with. Short of catastrophe, my employment demands that if I have some sort of failure then I'm back up and running within hours. Most everything is cloud based anyways, so I can limp along on a notebook or something if need be. Personal stuff can be recovered in days or weeks with no problem. Work stuff has to be hours.

If you're worried about your porn collection, or your stash of movies that were ripped when Netflix mailed DVDs out then I agree. You don't need to worry about it.

[cools]

Average home user: copies their digital photos from the camera directly to an external drive because they've lost everything on a PC before, and considers this safer.

Regarding power failure, it's a reasonable consideration but you *have* to have a minimum of two external copies, or maintain read only backups. Power problems could hit during your backup process and take out both devices. Other issues could do the same thing - I've seen someone spill liquid into a laptop which has taken out both the laptop and the external drive connected.

The probability of this happening is likely the same as the live system going down AND the cloud backup provider ceasing to be, but it's far and away more likely than the live system, the local backup and the cloud backup dying.

The more copies the better, but live + offsite is the minimum I'd consider safe. If you don't have an offsite backup of any sort, you may have a copy, but you have *no* backup.

Skykid travels a lot. Damage, loss or theft is a genuine risk. Carrying an external device with him mitigates the risk of the machine dying and taking his data with it. The most practical way of eliminating these risks is to make regular copies elsewhere - whether this just FTPing to a friends house or a fancy automated online provider.

(Ed, I'm with you on your disregard for Dropbox - it's expensive, unreliable, and insecure. I'd only ever use it for throwaway files on the free plan. There are far better cloud storage options, and massively superior dedidated cloud backup - not just storage - providers).

[ZellSF]

Ed Oscuro, you keep claiming I'm fixating on one point, it's true and I've explained why, but you keep ranting about online storage in reply to me when I've barely mentioned it at all.

Again my argument for backups is assuming the data is critical. Countless years of family pictures, documents that are critical to your work or otherwise. Stuff that to even to the poorest of people is more important than losing their computer (which is really off-topic to bring up anyway).

Of course if you keep no data you consider critical you don't have to keep very redundant backups.

[GaijinPunch]

Really good advice and info in here guys, liking the backup suggestions too. Pretty comfortable about going for the Pro model I was looking at now, time to dig deep.

I use crashplan as well. brentsg recommended it to me. So far love it, even though I've not had to redownload anything from it (knock on wood).

[cools]

FWIW, to minimise the bandwidth issue with Crashplan (my bandwidth, not theirs) I have three backup sets that are simply pointed at matching directories on any machine I use.

They're named: aether, chaos, order

Aether is lowest priority backup, it only holds files that I don't care about losing whatsoever.
Order is higher priority. It contains anything I consider finished/organised/archived/library - that kind of thing. It's exceptionally tidy. The contents don't change that often, and I maintain multiple external copies of it that are updated maybe once a month or so when I sync everything up (including chaos as well)
Chaos is highest priority. Contents are WIP and may be my only copy of them.

In this way, chaos gets backed up continuously whilst I'm working - only when it's fully synced does order start being backed up, and should both of those be done then rather than waste bandwidth/service I'm paying for aether will start to move.

(Names selected because previous efforts dump/crap, archive/lib and work/wip didn't really reflect the contents well enough for my liking. )

[brentsg]

Another good point that I haven't seen mentioned, is that you should also go through the practice exercise of recovering data from whatever method you choose. Don't just feel safe that your system has you covered unless you've actually exercised the recovery portion of the plan.

In my case, I felt pretty good with a local + remote Crashplan archive so I didn't bother. I lost a drive that contained all my ripped music and a lot of video that I could re-download from iTunes. I own the CDs for the music rips, but it would have sucked to re-do all that. It was everything since CDs came out, basically (that I own). No big deal, I went to my local archive (fast) and found that it was corrupt. I forget the exact reason, but I'd used some NAS storage on an old Windows Home Server setup. The algorithm that the older WHS used to create a single storage pool out of multiple drives didn't play nice with Crashplan's archive somehow. Fortunately I was able to (slowly) recover everything from the cloud backup so I was ok. They would have sent me all that content on disk for a fee, but I wasn't really in a hurry.

[Ed Oscuro]

There's a couple things I'd still like to know:

- Is there any online backup service out there that costs less than a new drive but gives comparable storage space? Just to give a good margin, let's say $260/year (roughly the price of two WD Red 3TB drives). 2.5TB or so, for the moment.

- And finally do any services eventually cease to store a backup of files under a dropped subscription? Honestly, I think a better plan would be an upfront cost for adding files, and then a cost per retrieval. I understand why Dropbox has a continuing rental plan (they continuously make backups of data from even dropped subs) but it just seems like it gives an incentive to game the system.

Residential cable bandwidth speeds and caps still look like a problem from here, too.

@ ZellSF: You don't really give most people a real choice, unless they have good friends or family who won't "lose" the drive or decide hey, they need a new drive in the middle of the night. It will work in some cases, but most people are going to turn to online storage, which for the reasons I've outlined leaves a big price / performance gap above owning your own devices.

If I could make a good backup on a cheap flash storage device, and leave it somewhere for safety, I definitely would, but again price to performance isn't there so that I can sink a bunch of money into a large enough drive that only serves as distant backup. For me, the very real benefits of having more storage available reasonably quickly locally far outweighs the miniscule potential for some event that kills all my data at once, while the much bigger issue of protecting against individual drive failures is solved.

Been sifting through scrapbooks of family stuff over a hundred years old - somehow or other they managed to do just fine - certainly I don't intend to put offsite backup plans off forever, but I'm not in any rush, either.

When money ceases to be at issue, then I think I'll be better able to put your recommendations into practice. Until then, though, price is the limiting factor.

[brentsg]

- Is there any online backup service out there that costs less than a new drive but gives comparable storage space? Just to give a good margin, let's say $260/year (roughly the price of two WD Red 3TB drives). 2.5TB or so, for the moment.

- And finally do any services eventually cease to store a backup of files under a dropped subscription? Honestly, I think a better plan would be an upfront cost for adding files, and then a cost per retrieval. I understand why Dropbox has a continuing rental plan (they continuously make backups of data from even dropped subs) but it just seems like it gives an incentive to game the system.

I haven't looked lately, but I paid $288 for a 4 year Crashplan subscription for unlimited storage and multiple devices. I don't know about the latter. I wouldn't expect them to store my files if I stopped paying them, so I didn't bother to look into it.

To me Dropbox is simply a convenient file sync utility. I work from multiple devices, and I share some files with coworkers so my employer pays for a 100GB sub. I don't view it as an archive, rather as a sync for files that are actively in use on multiple devices by multiple people.

[Ed Oscuro]

To me Dropbox is simply a convenient file sync utility. I work from multiple devices, and I share some files with coworkers so my employer pays for a 100GB sub. I don't view it as an archive, rather as a sync for files that are actively in use on multiple devices by multiple people.

Yeah - with different needs I'd see the economics of it changing.

Realized that writable Blu-Ray media isn't too expensive these days; looks like I could get a 20-pack spindle of 25GB discs for under $30. That surely makes a lot of sense for local backup and it also would simplify offsite backup.

[cools]

My subscription is unlimited storage for up to 10 devices, I renew annually - there's always a retention offer and there are regular starting offers.

Unlimited versioning as well.

I looked into the costs of doing such a task myself, considered the setup and maintenance work... And got out the plastic. Enterprise grade backup for a home user at the cost of a few pizzas.

[KindGrind]

I can't count how many floppies / CDs / physical drives have died on me pre-cloud era. Lots of memories (mostly pictures) / hours of work lost. Just painful.

You think: "Well it's your fault, stuff kept crapping out on you and you did nothing more than buying more media storage solutions that you knew would repeat the circle. You gotta learn, at some point." When the only option is either a CD, Flash drive or a hard drive, you're pretty much screwed, because these *will* fail, and quite randomly at that. One minute you save something on your device, the next, everything is gone.

I see no reason not to back up using cloud services, no matter the price. The amount of data you can save for a relatively minimal fee is astronomical... it's quite ridiculous, really.

[GaijinPunch]

Wait until you have a kid... basically the importance of all the work you do on the computer is dwarfed by the importance of the memories of your kid growing up.