05-24-2017, 11:57 AM
Aside from ransomware, there is the issue of hard drives dying. They are mechanical devices and in time they fail. I'd go so far as to say you should expect them to fail. The question is more when rather than if. SSDs also have a finite lifespan.
My backup policy is to have more than one copy, in more than one place.
I have mirrored RAID hard drives at home. There is a nightly backup to a server 150km away plus a separate backup that lags a week behind. I also have two USB drives that I backup and take to work (i.e. swap drives every week so there is always a reasonably up to date version). It is designed to protect me from hardware failure, floods, fire or someone stealing my computer.
Another tip - check your backups from time to time. Are the files where you expect? Are they up to date? If you had to restore everything, could you do it?
barq
My backup policy is to have more than one copy, in more than one place.
I have mirrored RAID hard drives at home. There is a nightly backup to a server 150km away plus a separate backup that lags a week behind. I also have two USB drives that I backup and take to work (i.e. swap drives every week so there is always a reasonably up to date version). It is designed to protect me from hardware failure, floods, fire or someone stealing my computer.
Another tip - check your backups from time to time. Are the files where you expect? Are they up to date? If you had to restore everything, could you do it?
barq