Comments on Profile Post by Kunlun

MicroUSB? that's not the most durable connector but should suffice unless you're really testing the mating count or whatever you call it. I've lost lots of photo memories in the past so I'm rather anal about redundancies; local copies, external drive, and cloud storage for anything non-confidential.

If your laptop has the capacity for additional internal storage, do that instead. Next best option is an external HDD or SSD. Less than that is trading convenience of form factor for frustrations and heartbreak.

I’m trying to come up with a docking station solution where anytime I plug in to use my keyboard/mouse/monitor I am also backing up to an external drive. I would use the docking station enough where I wouldn’t worry too much about taking a drive with me everywhere

Also I know cloud backups are a thing but is it possible to backup remotely to your home network?

I feel like this might take up way too much bandwidth to do regularly. Not to mention some security issues.

@Sqveak Thanks! It's a galaxy book2, pretty thin. I appreciate your point. Maybe I'll keep data that's already backed up but I may need access to on the m-usb while things not yet backed up will be on the intHD.

External USB HDDs seem to favour the USB 3 *micro-USB-B* connector. Which I consider one of the most horrible of all time.

However, one gets used to it. And I haven't actually had a connector disaster.

Well that solves the problem of your cat scratching its nails on the wooden surfaces. It must think "oh, the human has a warm wooden scratch thingy" and then proceeds to ignore the trees. How did your machine survive?

All my computers backup frequently to my Diskstation, and my Diskstation creates encrypted backups twice a day at a cloud storage provider. I’m using borg for all my backups, it’s the best backup software I ever found. It requires command line knowledge, though, and has a steep learning curve.
Also, my Diskstation is my cloud. I don’t trust any cloud providers.

@zottel borg looks interesting. Thanks

Is your 'Diskstation' on the same network, in the same premises, as your data?

(I have had a heap of problems of late with external usb filesystems going bad. I believe I chanced on the cause: the hub I was connecting them to)

@Thad E Ginathom Yes, it’s on the local network and has a three disk RAID array so that losing a hard disk won’t be a problem, either. I’m talking about a Synology Diskstation, btw, hence the capital D.

@zottel, OK, but according to me, that doesn't count as backup, as it is subject to to all the same risks, from power surge to flood, fire, theft, etc, as your main system. Offsite copy[ies] is much more secure.

I have two discs, one at a friend's house some distance away. They get swapped out every week or so. In the commercial world, that would be laughable: but I am prepared to take that much risk

An onsite back-up system, especially using something like Borg, is highly useful for convenience. I think, in the jargon, they call call it high-availability --- but not security.

@Thad E Ginathom Sure, that’s why the Diskstation creates encrypted cloud backups of itself (also using borg) twice a day, as I wrote above. ;)

@zotel: You also said that Diskstation is your cloud, as you don't trust cloud providers. So I got confused.

I don't trust "the cloud" either. But I would like to have a full backup on it. As well as my physical stuff.

@Thad E Ginathom Should you ever start using borg, I can recommend https://www.borgbase.com/ . Very cheap backup space, only to usable with borg, though. And as borg can create encrypted backups, you don’t need to trust them.