For those who don't know, Snapper is the linux equivalent of time machine and actually protects against pretty much anything except removing the partition that contains your backups.
By the way, a suggestion for a video would be to discuss interior design optimisations. Making good habits easier than bad ones and lowering activation energy (for eg. exercise), reducing clutter, making cleaning easier and faster etc. I'm sure we'd be interested in your thoughts.
Great point about not needing fast bulk restore to protect against user error because it's usually only a subset of your files (so time machine or back blaze is fine). I keep my bulk files on a NAS and unRAID + Duplicati + backblaze b2 has been awesome for covering all the cases you mentioned. I really love unRAID for it's failure modes and flexibility (and you get really massive drive pool support). I need to look at CCC and kopia as options to back up family laptops to unRAID though!
Fantastic! Regrettably, I think it's more likely I'll suffer one or more of the failures you are protecting against than be able to afford to do this in the next year :')
I enjoyed your video. Presently I use time machine & carbon copy cloner on 3 external drives, time machine daily backups, CCC for rotating the drives every 5 days so the oldest backup is 10 days old if anything goes wrong. Not as extensive as yours but it gives me some peace of mind.
Hi, love this video, shame it didn’t do as well as your others as I think it’s got some really valuable info in! In terms of backup, have you researched into more automated solutions like running a home server with something like nextcloud? This is particularly appealing to me as it means I’ll be able to access all my files wherever I am. If so, was there a particular reason why you didn’t opt for something like that?
Oldie but a goodie. Great video as always. My main problem is that I keep upgrading the size of my primary storage, and now I have a pile of drives that are too small to clone the primary drive. I could span them, but then I have to plug in 2 or even 3 drives every time... What do I do with my 250GB drives lol
Thanks! Yeah same issue - luckily hard drive capacity has kept up with my storage needs so far. So I'm still using a single 8TB drive as my archive drive (which gets backed up to another 8TB). So I just keep consolidating and moving to larger drives as needed.
Great routine and video. I could definitely do with improving mine after seeing this. Couple of questions - 1) what about encryption, which is as much of a concern as loss in a theft scenario? My NAS has encrypted drives but need to think about the off-site backup. 2) how to get my wife's files backed up as if it isn't automatic it doesn't get done! I settled on OneDrive automatic backups of her laptop, which has version history, but might include a monthly carbon copy that you mentioned (unsure if OneDrive can stop ransomware locking of all your files). 3) does CC put stress on the drives causing them to fail sooner if doing a complete image every night, or is it incremental? I know that is the risk of RAID, where restoring a failed disk can cause the remaining good disks to fail.
Cheers. All my drives are encrypted yep. CCC is incremental so not too concerned about drive stress. That raid issue though is another reason I’m not super excited by the technology. Might be worth checking how good OneDrive is with ransomware scenarios.
How to deal with storing video projects back in the archive after they are done? Do you always have your raw clips go straight from capture to the system drive, and then archive? Scenario is I have some footage in my "archives" I want to use in a current project, so I copy then to the system drive. After I'm done, when I move the finished project folder back to archive, I'll essentially have clones of this archival footage (the originals and the copies I made inside the finished project folder).
Yeah this is a really tricky issue with the way FCP keeps its media in the libraries. I actually copy good footage into a general storage library so I know I still have the good stuff even when I delete my oldest projects (I have decided there’s no need to keep UA-cam projects after a little while but I do like the idea of using the good b-roll again). I wonder if there is a more advanced workflow to be had using a single FCP library so you can share footage between projects easily and avoid the duplicates but it already sounds complicated in terms of managing the archive drive!
Today i found out about DataHand keyboard or the modern version: lalboard. By searching for CharaChord. I have build a Corne last year but those look nice. Maybe something that interestes you
It all depends on what you consider the value of your data is. If you're a freelance consultant working for clients and are dependent on your data being accessible or you don't get paid... a few quid on a backblaze sub and a 30 quid cloner is cheap income protection insurance.
Unfortunately I have yet to find a way to convince friends/family to care about data backups. It always ALWAYS has to start with catastrophic data loss of irreplaceable data like old family photos. Then suddenly everyone cares. Besides that I think this is a farely well thought out strategy.
there's a saying in Russian that perfectly illustrates this behaviour - "until a rooster bites you in the arse". If you think about it, it's actually rational from an evolutionary standpoint - why spend energy preparing for an event that never happened to us and might not happen? Intellectually we realise that it might happen, but our animal brain doesn't register it viscerally. Only when it happens and you get this flush of negative emotion you actually realise it. This doesn't only relate to backups of course, stuff like risky investing or displacing documents due to a mess in your house comes to mind.
Yeah, I actually recorded a good chunk on that point but it was too long winded to make the final edit. Basically a NAS by itself doesn’t really add any level of protection apart from some confidence around a single drive failure event. Its main purpose is to make it easier to have an expandable single volume for archive. In terms of backup it still needs its own offsite copy, which means you actually need to buy a second nas, or at least pay for another cloud service but you loose your fast recovery option then. They are definitely useful when you need more than 18TB on your archive drive but they are seriously expensive especially when you consider proper protection for the data on them. The way I see it is they’re more there as a solution to capacity rather than actually providing a solution for backup.
For a less comprehensive backup system, I just use an external harddrive, borgbackup and backblaze B2 offsite storage. I have a script that collects backups from my servers and writes them to the external disk and all these backups are synced to backblaze. This means I have two copies of versioned backups: one at home and accessible, and one offsite in case anything goes wrong with the on-site backup.
Thanks, Ben. This was the nudge I needed (along with some OSX/one drive corruption of a few office files). I’m going to retire the NAS for a while and just go with a number of disks to build confidence in reliable clones and offsite drives.
I love your videos. The keyboards and the tech. Your attention to detail and insights have helped me improve my working methods and because of you I’m using a programmable split keyboard and it’s fantastic. Also the trick with soldering I learned here. The quality of your videos are really good too. Why don’t you have more viewers? I seriously don’t understand it. 4 months on a video with practical and cost effective methods to secure data and you have… 5000 views? This should reach more people.
Thanks so much! I was disappointed with how this vid did too! I think backups are just one of those things people aren’t that interested in doh! It’s all very random and hit and miss - the Apple Watch vid I did a few months ago went over 250k so it’s all about demand for topics I think.
I am young enough that computers with contemporary storage systems (and therefore occasional catastrophic data loss) have been a part of my life as long as I can remember 🫣 I’m moving next week and I think I’ll finally get a proper backup system set up in the new place. Thanks for many ideas I never would have thought of!
Have been in cybersecurity for almost 15 years and you do a better job of rick modeling than most enterprises I've worked with.
Great to hear thank you!
For those who don't know, Snapper is the linux equivalent of time machine and actually protects against pretty much anything except removing the partition that contains your backups.
By the way, a suggestion for a video would be to discuss interior design optimisations. Making good habits easier than bad ones and lowering activation energy (for eg. exercise), reducing clutter, making cleaning easier and faster etc. I'm sure we'd be interested in your thoughts.
Yeah that kind of thing is definitely on the radar. Cheers.
Great point about not needing fast bulk restore to protect against user error because it's usually only a subset of your files (so time machine or back blaze is fine).
I keep my bulk files on a NAS and unRAID + Duplicati + backblaze b2 has been awesome for covering all the cases you mentioned. I really love unRAID for it's failure modes and flexibility (and you get really massive drive pool support).
I need to look at CCC and kopia as options to back up family laptops to unRAID though!
Fantastic! Regrettably, I think it's more likely I'll suffer one or more of the failures you are protecting against than be able to afford to do this in the next year :')
I enjoyed your video. Presently I use time machine & carbon copy cloner on 3 external drives, time machine daily backups, CCC for rotating the drives every 5 days so the oldest backup is 10 days old if anything goes wrong. Not as extensive as yours but it gives me some peace of mind.
Pretty similar setup! Nice
Now I needs it.
Welcome back, Ben! Cheers!
Summer holidays have been a nightmare for spare time sorry! Hopefully will be able to get back into more of a routine when kids are back at school.
Siracusa would approve
Hi, love this video, shame it didn’t do as well as your others as I think it’s got some really valuable info in!
In terms of backup, have you researched into more automated solutions like running a home server with something like nextcloud? This is particularly appealing to me as it means I’ll be able to access all my files wherever I am. If so, was there a particular reason why you didn’t opt for something like that?
Yeah I guess it's hard to convince people they need backups!! I didn't really have a need for remote access so didn't go down that route.
Great video, and the sound effects are kind of hilarious.
Oldie but a goodie. Great video as always.
My main problem is that I keep upgrading the size of my primary storage, and now I have a pile of drives that are too small to clone the primary drive. I could span them, but then I have to plug in 2 or even 3 drives every time... What do I do with my 250GB drives lol
Thanks! Yeah same issue - luckily hard drive capacity has kept up with my storage needs so far. So I'm still using a single 8TB drive as my archive drive (which gets backed up to another 8TB). So I just keep consolidating and moving to larger drives as needed.
Great routine and video. I could definitely do with improving mine after seeing this. Couple of questions - 1) what about encryption, which is as much of a concern as loss in a theft scenario? My NAS has encrypted drives but need to think about the off-site backup. 2) how to get my wife's files backed up as if it isn't automatic it doesn't get done! I settled on OneDrive automatic backups of her laptop, which has version history, but might include a monthly carbon copy that you mentioned (unsure if OneDrive can stop ransomware locking of all your files). 3) does CC put stress on the drives causing them to fail sooner if doing a complete image every night, or is it incremental? I know that is the risk of RAID, where restoring a failed disk can cause the remaining good disks to fail.
Cheers. All my drives are encrypted yep. CCC is incremental so not too concerned about drive stress. That raid issue though is another reason I’m not super excited by the technology. Might be worth checking how good OneDrive is with ransomware scenarios.
How to deal with storing video projects back in the archive after they are done? Do you always have your raw clips go straight from capture to the system drive, and then archive?
Scenario is I have some footage in my "archives" I want to use in a current project, so I copy then to the system drive. After I'm done, when I move the finished project folder back to archive, I'll essentially have clones of this archival footage (the originals and the copies I made inside the finished project folder).
Yeah this is a really tricky issue with the way FCP keeps its media in the libraries. I actually copy good footage into a general storage library so I know I still have the good stuff even when I delete my oldest projects (I have decided there’s no need to keep UA-cam projects after a little while but I do like the idea of using the good b-roll again). I wonder if there is a more advanced workflow to be had using a single FCP library so you can share footage between projects easily and avoid the duplicates but it already sounds complicated in terms of managing the archive drive!
Today i found out about DataHand keyboard or the modern version: lalboard. By searching for CharaChord. I have build a Corne last year but those look nice. Maybe something that interestes you
Hey Ben, looking to follow your backup system but was wondering how you encrypt the data on the drives? Cheers.
I just enable FileVault on the mac
I'd just like to say that your sense of what's affordable is... not everyone's. :)
It all depends on what you consider the value of your data is.
If you're a freelance consultant working for clients and are dependent on your data being accessible or you don't get paid... a few quid on a backblaze sub and a 30 quid cloner is cheap income protection insurance.
@@lmaoroflcopter Right. And that's... not everyone's situation. That's all I'm saying.
How do you update the archive drive when swapping them out?
When the archive backup is connected and backup is running I won’t operate the computer. I set this routine off last thing at night.
You need a NAS
I actually was going to include a bit about NAS in this video. Basically I couldn’t see the point of them. Loads of unneeded expense for use case.
Do you have launch codes that you haven't told any of us about or something?😂😂😂
Lol
It's funny to watch lunatics talk about things they havenoidea about or bad ideas about
please elaborate and help others then!
Unfortunately I have yet to find a way to convince friends/family to care about data backups. It always ALWAYS has to start with catastrophic data loss of irreplaceable data like old family photos. Then suddenly everyone cares.
Besides that I think this is a farely well thought out strategy.
So so true.
there's a saying in Russian that perfectly illustrates this behaviour - "until a rooster bites you in the arse". If you think about it, it's actually rational from an evolutionary standpoint - why spend energy preparing for an event that never happened to us and might not happen? Intellectually we realise that it might happen, but our animal brain doesn't register it viscerally. Only when it happens and you get this flush of negative emotion you actually realise it. This doesn't only relate to backups of course, stuff like risky investing or displacing documents due to a mess in your house comes to mind.
I use a fireproof safe to store my mostly offline NAS, it's mostly 3D files and coding projects.
definitely an OCD issue here...
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly! Heh
Nice one, Ben. Really well thought through. Any reason you did not go for a nas system with some type of raid configuration?
Yeah, I actually recorded a good chunk on that point but it was too long winded to make the final edit. Basically a NAS by itself doesn’t really add any level of protection apart from some confidence around a single drive failure event. Its main purpose is to make it easier to have an expandable single volume for archive. In terms of backup it still needs its own offsite copy, which means you actually need to buy a second nas, or at least pay for another cloud service but you loose your fast recovery option then. They are definitely useful when you need more than 18TB on your archive drive but they are seriously expensive especially when you consider proper protection for the data on them. The way I see it is they’re more there as a solution to capacity rather than actually providing a solution for backup.
For a less comprehensive backup system, I just use an external harddrive, borgbackup and backblaze B2 offsite storage. I have a script that collects backups from my servers and writes them to the external disk and all these backups are synced to backblaze. This means I have two copies of versioned backups: one at home and accessible, and one offsite in case anything goes wrong with the on-site backup.
Thanks, Ben. This was the nudge I needed (along with some OSX/one drive corruption of a few office files). I’m going to retire the NAS for a while and just go with a number of disks to build confidence in reliable clones and offsite drives.
I just discovered your channel and love our thinking. Could you do a video about File Hireachies and thes best filing structure for PCs?
Interestingly I've given up on that. I just use search to find stuff and use a fairly disorganised folder dumping ground.
@@BenVallackHaha that is brilliant! I love it. So do you essentially have all your documents, pics, vids in one place (i.e one folder)?
How expensive is this
Very cheap - uses mostly cheap 3.5” drives. No need for NAS or solid state etc.
The drive swapping idea is nice for my much simpler 2-drive routine. I'll steal that.
I love your videos. The keyboards and the tech. Your attention to detail and insights have helped me improve my working methods and because of you I’m using a programmable split keyboard and it’s fantastic. Also the trick with soldering I learned here. The quality of your videos are really good too. Why don’t you have more viewers? I seriously don’t understand it. 4 months on a video with practical and cost effective methods to secure data and you have… 5000 views? This should reach more people.
Thanks so much! I was disappointed with how this vid did too! I think backups are just one of those things people aren’t that interested in doh! It’s all very random and hit and miss - the Apple Watch vid I did a few months ago went over 250k so it’s all about demand for topics I think.
Hey Ben, Could you make a video talking about how you use vim with Colemak DH? I made the switch on your suggestion, and I'm finding vim akward.
I'm not using Colemak anymore but definitely want to do a VIM video as same principles will apply.
I am young enough that computers with contemporary storage systems (and therefore occasional catastrophic data loss) have been a part of my life as long as I can remember 🫣 I’m moving next week and I think I’ll finally get a proper backup system set up in the new place. Thanks for many ideas I never would have thought of!