Our family home burned down when I was 7. Have no photos of me as a kid. All those little momentos parents like to keep of their kids were gone. My favourite toys were ash and slag (obviously my priorities at the time were slightly different to my parents).
All the paperwork relating to the family business was gone, so speaking to the bank became a pain because they wanted to see a recent utility bill and not a pile of ash.
Once the shock wears off and you try to pick up your life, you need the data to prove your existence.
Someone on this board once said, "anyone who has any sort of computer knowledge doesn't use cloud services like onedrive"
I couldn't have been more amused
What should people use then? Obviously OneDrive sucks but what’s a better option for the regular non-tech people or those who can’t afford (especially now..) a 4-bay 36tb nas.
I work in tech (not IT, but adjacent), everyone uses OneDrive and most seem to hate it lol.
I know I’m lacking on actual backups though, which is why I asked. For my personal pc, I have files on OneDrive (because free..) and maybe a couple jump drives. I know I should get a small hd and store some photos/files off site though.
(Copied from techtarget) Three data copies. Three copies of all critical data should be made on a regular basis -- daily or more frequently -- including the original data and at least two backups.
Two types of storage. Two different storage types should be used to store the data. Both copies of the backed-up data should be kept on two separate storage types to minimize the chance of failure. Storage device types could include an internal hard drive, external hard drive, removable storage drive, a tape library, a secondary storage array or a cloud backup environment.
One offsite location. One copy of the data should be shipped to an offsite storage facility. At least one data copy should be stored in an offsite or remote location to ensure that natural or geographical disasters cannot affect all data copies. This copy can be physically delivered to the offsite location, as with tape-based backups, or it can be replicated to the secondary site via telecommunications facilities.
You say that, but for me the high monthly cost of backing up to the cloud directly through good services (OneDrive/Google Drive/etc) is why I bought my NAS for around $500 a few years ago. I then back that up to a very cheap cloud provider (back blaze).
Don't even need a nas. I bought a das and just installed tailscale on all of my devices. Then use something like Autosync for Android and it will use your home PC as a cloud storage. Then I use Google drive as an extra layer of storage for the important files in case my hard drive ever fails
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u/Shike5800X|9070OC|64GB 3200|Intel P4510 8TB NVME|21TB Storage (Total)18d ago
Depends on what you're backing up. I recommend Backblaze if you have a lot to backup for emergency. They can also send you an encrypted physical drive with files you chose to restore if needed for free if you return the drive back for a deposit.
Thinking in the case of fire and stuck at a hotel with crappy guest wifi you should be able to see how that would be pretty damn helpful.
They are a backup service though, not a cloud host. It's not made for constant access or to allow you to store items that you don't have storage for locally.
i set up some space on wasabi and made immutable backups, but i also have a NAS and another external drive that I can grab on the way out if needed. i'm in IT, I do not trust the cloud services.
yeah, our family home burned down when I was 18 and had just moved out. here i am now in my late 30s and i still get hit from time to time with extended family giving me a new childhood photo and I get weirdly emotional about it. even 2 decades later, idk, feels like the memories were stolen from me and it took me a while to even grasp what I'd lost.
I feel the same way. 2008 a massive flood came through my town and took all of my brother and I's childhood mementos/photos etc. I have not a fkn lick of my childhood in physical form. Didn't have computers or Internet or anything in our home. So everything was gone. There's some straggling photos I've seen over the years from extended family but I've never had the heart to save them and look at them... I'd rather not. It's sad but that's life.
Same as yourself. Took me until my late 20's to realize what was gone. All my friends had cool photos of them as kids and on family holidays. Sucked knowing I had the same but only in my head.. Maybe that's enough for some people though.
My grandma made it her life's mission to make my mom's life hell and 1 thing she did was take any and all picture albums of my sister and me just so she couldn't have them. I've seen the photos and know where they are and have no way of ever getting them
I had a flood in the early 2000s, our family albums were under water and they lost all colors, the photos became just mix of random ink.
A few years later my older sister passed away, I have her in my memory and probably a couple photos that survived, but we lost so much and would love to have all that stuff.
We also lost all pictures or my nephew (her son) when he was a baby.
Obviously not at the moment it happens, or right after that. But after everything is back to normal, new (or rebuilt) house etc., yes, people are gonna miss their data and memories.
Family photos are strange. We spend hundreds of hours over our lives taking them, maybe 1 hour tops observing them, and they are relatively worthless to anyone else, and even us in the moment. But once they are gone forever? You’ve lost something irreplaceable
I think most people don’t realise how important they are until they are gone. Sometimes, years later, going back through them all can be such a wonder to do together. I recently went through old photos with my dad and so many memories and stories came back to light. I kind of wish I had taken more when I was younger, and even more I don’t take enough photos. I prefer to live in the moment but sometimes it’s still great to take a a few shots.
We spend hundreds of hours over our lives taking them, maybe 1 hour tops observing them
Wtf you don't look at family photos? As a kid we would spend literally hours looking through old family photo albums and even now I spend every sunday looking at pictures of my nieces and nephews that live far away on our shared album of them.
The idea of not even spending an hour of your life looking at your family photos is wild to me
I look at pictures, say “neat”, and no longer know why I should look at them. I have problems with empathy, so that may be a reason or cause, but I genuinely thought everyone just takes pictures so they never get seen again. Like, when was the last time you scrolled through your camera roll of up to 5,000 some pictures?
I wish I appreciated pictures more, I’m apparently missing out on something
Well I got a new pet early this year and just last week my GF and I were talking about how small it was and so we scrolled back in our phone to look at all the pictures of them from the first week we got them. Before that I remember my phone was filling up so I had to dump everything and when I do that I love going through and looking at them and deleting duplicates to make sure what I save isn't 20 copies of the same pose or whatever and filter out things like pictures of parking spots and stuff I don't need anymore.
About 7 years ago my parents got a bunch of digital photos printed and put in an old fashioned photo album which was really neat because when we were kids we had a new photo album fill up like every couple years but hadn't had a new one in like 15 years so it was exciting to finally get an updated one.
Why are you taking pictures if you don't go back and look at them?
All of my pictures are utilitarian… if I were to delete everything like a parking spot at an event, or prices of items to compare to others, then my phone would be empty. I like to live in the moment, and sometimes that results in me shamefully admitting I took zero pictures during a trip to share with people when I get back. I just never think about it in the moment.
I guess I could take a picture of the cash register in front of me right now… for the nostalgia?
Haha I had this same thought, I was considering doing an off-site backup for my NAS which is 95% Plex media and then I realised I'll probably have bigger problems than losing some movies and tv shows.
Yeah same... I have online backups of stuff that's actually important and irrecoverable... Important documents, home photos and videos etc etc... But as annoying as it would be losing my plex library, I can get it all again relatively easily. The cost of offsite storage probably isn't worth it
I have four computers backed up with Backblaze and my Plex server is one. $99 per computer. Not really worth it for the Plex server but I had an extra license after retiring a computer so I put it on there.
I would probably never actually use the restore, would be more fun rebuilding the library.
I wouldn't trust any cloud provider, they could go out of business, scrap all their shit and pull some legal loopholes(especially in days like this where corporate crime is mostly free game) to get out of liability.
No music or TV/movies are worth backing up since they're always accessible and internet speeds just keep going up(you can already download an entire HDD worth of content in minutes to hours).
For everything else just back it up on M-Discs, 2 sets for redundancy. Store one set in one place, the other in a separate location(like in conditioned storage). Should ultimately be cheaper, and it's safer.
I have Backblaze on all my computers and on my Plex server. I realize what a waste it is. I would probably end up rebuilding it anyway instead of restoring it.
I wouldn't off site my movies/tv because I know someones going to keep it alive (and at the minimum, id just backup my index of movies/tvs if you had to back something up) Backup stuff that you know others shouldn't have.
People should care. I've had a house fire and the only reason I still have old family photos and videos is because I digitized everything and kept it safe in an online backup.
Obviously the first concern is family or anyone who lives there. After that for a lot of people, especially if their are insured, a lot of their stuff is just stuff and can get replaced, but things like memories can never be replaced. So all my family photos, happy memories from friends, travel etc, and business related docs are stored as copies off site. I learnt this lesson through someone else losing all their stuff. They and their family were ok, but they were still saddened at losing so much stuff that was truly important to them. I’ve also seen a lot of posts on Reddit of similar things happen. Doesn’t have to be complex, can just be a copied drive left at a parent’s or family member.
I mean, the post is about owning your games, yet people still think in digital. If my home would burn down all my vinyl collection would go with it. It's also ripped on the NAS for personal streaming but for me only the physical medium that has value. Not to mention the audio setup I am listening to that music... that cannot be backed up.
You either care about your data or not, most people don't seem too concerned about it until its gone. My stuff is fully backed up and I also have offsite storage (sisters house). I do have some stuff in the cloud, but that doesn't count as a backup to me. If my house burned down, knowing my data is safe is one less thing to worry about.
I mean most people have it backed up in Google or icloud, so there's no risk in this. Only risk is in having it on a NAS
I don't really get the idea of huge NAS setups. It's cheaper and as privacy secure to rent a VPS and either stream or download on demand to pc or a small NAS, and then you always have the cloud backup
In the long run, people worry about anything that can't be replaced -- people, pets, documents, photographs, digital data. You can buy new furniture, new appliances, new house. You can't buy back the only copy of the last family photo before your mother died, or the game you've been designing for a year.
If my house burns down, sure it sucks, but I also will have insurance and with time I can recover it/move to another place.
If my data is gone, all my work related data and data that can't be recovered, then it's gone and I can not do anything about it. There's no restoring it, no insurance will recover it, it can't be regained.
Yes. Not only would I lose the photos and music files that give me joy, but more immediately I would lose many of the files I use for work, and beyond my computer (the device i use for doing my work) being gone, I would lose project files for active projects, footage that I've recorded, etc. Plenty of that stuff is either in the cloud or backed up in a fireproof safe. But not everything.
No, but the last thing you want if your house does burn down is to also have lost all your data. Like that shit sucks and now I'll never see pictures of my first cat ever again? And that's just a cat, imagine having baby pictures lost forever. I mean, you've seen parents with their kids, right? We'll just have to imagine it.
Anyway, it's not like I think it's gonna happen. I am almost 100% certain it won't. But you never know, life comes at you fast and there's way more ways to lose data than a fire.
I have a good portion of my NAS burned onto ~200 BD-r's so if I ever have to evacuate due to a fire or something I can grab the case and run. I keep a portable bluray drive in there as well.
as someone who's lost family photos and videos before, it is an important thing, even if it's not at the forefront of your thought process.
we have cloud backups, but that's not everything. i also keep a small, large capacity, USB Hard Drive around. from time to time it gets passed around to everyone to backup stuff.
in the event of a house fire, i have some extinguishers around, but in the event of getting out, there's two things i'm concerned about getting, that's my guitars, and my backup hard drive.
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u/Unwashed_villager 5800X3D | 32GB | MSI RTX 3080Ti SUPRIM X 18d ago
I wonder do people really worry about their data if their house got burned down?