What data is there

Examples of basic data:

  • photos
  • address book
  • office files

Examples of cached data:

  • software distributions
  • Backup copies of movies and music

How to store data

The data must be located in at least 3 places:

  • processing location (phone, computer, NAS, cloud service (e.g. Google Docs and web-based email))
  • hot archive (NAS, cloud, external hard drive)
  • cold archive (NAS, cloud, external hard drive)

It is desirable to have a processing location and a hot archive on different computers. At least physically on different hard drives.

It is good if the hot archive additionally takes pictures every day. This is how all NAS are able to do now, you just need to configure it. This will make it easy to roll back to previous versions of files (if accidentally deleted or someone intentionally deleted or fixed something).

The cold archive must additionally be physically located somewhere else to cover the risks of fires and other similar problems. It can also be an external hard drive, which is usually stored with relatives, and is updated about once a month.

If the archive is stored in the cloud, it is better to additionally encrypt it so that when hacking the cloud as a whole, we are not specifically affected. Depending on the alarm level, you can encrypt data on both external hard drives and NAS. It’s all pretty easy to set up. Only then you don’t need to lose the encryption keys ;).

According to my feelings, it is enough to update the hot archive at home once a week, and the cold one once a month. Of course, if you see that for some reason a lot of data has recently arrived (or just particularly important data), then you can manually update the archives immediately after that so as not to lose them for sure.

Why is this?

The archive closes 3 risks:

  • loss of recent data – the latest backup from available sources is used for recovery
  • data loss somewhere in the past (accidentally deleted by himself or someone intentionally deleted or corrected) – mainly through the hot archive (and its snapshot history)
  • it is assumed that in the event of a disaster (a lot of things broke at the same time), the system and data will be restored from the cold archive

You need to understand that it is quite easy to lose data that is stored in one place. It’s already more difficult in two places, but if it’s in the same room, it’s still pretty likely. Therefore, 3 places are usually recommended.