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Online backups

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  Online backups Chris J Dixon <chris@cdixon.me.uk> - 2014-09-17 08:24 +0100
    Re: Online backups scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2014-09-17 15:44 +0000
    Re: Online backups "RS Wood" <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-09-18 06:36 -0500
      Re: Online backups Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-18 11:55 +0000
        Re: Online backups RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-09-18 13:31 +0000
          Re: Online backups Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-18 23:20 +0000
            Re: Online backups Will Honea <whonea@whonea.net> - 2014-09-18 18:37 -0600
            Re: Online backups Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2014-09-19 13:14 +0200
              Re: Online backups Will Honea <whonea@whonea.net> - 2014-09-19 12:51 -0600
            Re: Online backups scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2014-09-19 15:43 +0000
              Re: Online backups Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-19 18:50 +0000
                Re: Online backups scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2014-09-19 21:43 +0000
        Re: Online backups scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2014-09-18 17:06 +0000
      Re: Online backups scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2014-09-18 16:27 +0000
    Re: Online backups Roger Blake <rogblake@iname.invalid> - 2014-09-19 16:31 +0000
      Re: Online backups Chris J Dixon <chris@cdixon.me.uk> - 2014-09-20 08:03 +0100
        Re: Online backups Roger Blake <rogblake@iname.invalid> - 2014-09-22 16:34 +0000
          Re: Online backups Chris J Dixon <chris@cdixon.me.uk> - 2014-09-22 19:28 +0100

#4941 — Online backups

As a subscriber to Office 365, I get effectively unlimited (1TB)
OneDrive space, so am wondering if I should make use of it as my
off-site backup. Local backup is already well sorted.

Windows 7 has slightly fewer configuration options than 8, but I
think I have it arranged to leave the folders on my PC, and
available offline.  A few trial folders seem to behave as
expected, and don't appear to give problems with my local
backups.

I have seen suggestions that databases can get a bit upset, and
it is best simply to copy them to OneDrive when not in use, but
otherwise I see no reason not to move much of my data folders to
OneDrive. 

I know that uploads are very much slower than downloads, but once
done, I don't think my files have great churn.

Any experiences or alternative strategies out there?

Chris
-- 
Chris J Dixon  Nottingham UK
chris@cdixon.me.uk

Plant amazing Acers.

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#4952

In article <4jdi1ap1m057d9ociq7a9nusdq5gh0g07l@4ax.com>,
Chris J Dixon  <chris@cdixon.me.uk> wrote:
>Any experiences or alternative strategies out there?

I think it was someone here who mentioned Tarsnap a while back:

http://www.tarsnap.com/

I have about 2 GB (after compression and encryption; about 4.5 GB before
that) of documents and Git repos backed up there, at a cost of about 50
cents per month.  I prepaid with $10 worth of Bitcoin (!), so it'll be a
while before I need to send them more money.  It's not free, but it's cheap
enough for moderate amounts of data that might change frequently.  It's
encrypted in the backup client with a key that you generate and never
divulge to Tarsnap, so others (whether Tarsnap, a malicious government
entity, or whatever) can't feasibly access your data.

Note that I'm only using it for documents and Git repos.  For things like
photos, music, and video, I think you're better off backing up to physical
media which you then store offsite.  I use BD-R with dvdisaster to put 20 GB
onto a disc that costs less than a dollar, which goes into a binder in my
desk at work.  There are currently 205 discs in the binder; some files on
older discs have been superseded, but the data backed up this way currently
adds up to a little over 3 TB.  Others might use a stack of hard drives for
this purpose.  

  _/_
 / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( http://alfter.us/            Top-posting!
 \_^_/                              >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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#4961

Tarsnap is great for Unix platforms (I'm looking at it for a BSD server at  
the moment) but it doesn't run on Windows without Cygwin, which seems out of  
the question here. Truth is, backup is so important, so individual, and so  
complex, it's almost hard to give good advice on a generalized basis. My  
system consists of: all personal data running on a NAS, which I back up to a  
pair of USB hard drives every Sunday and store someplace physically far away  
from the machine. But my pictures and movies I burn to DVDs or CDs every few  
months, each time starting from the present and going back as far as I can  
while still fitting on the disk. That way there's always some overlap and  
multiple disks have part of that overlap, affording me some redundancy.  
Unfortunately, the things I most care to back up - pictures - take up so much  
space I can't afford to go for cloud storage, and it's not a great solution  
for me anyway for other reasons. If Cloud365 or whatever gives you some  
space, you may as well use it. You might also check out www.spideroak.com too  
for sensitive stuff you'd prefer to keep encrypted in the cloud. I use it  
too. And it works with Windows (and other platforms too).

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#4963

RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> wrote:
> But my pictures and movies I burn to DVDs or CDs every few months,
> each time starting from the present and going back as far as I can
> while still fitting on the disk. That way there's always some overlap
> and multiple disks have part of that overlap, affording me some
> redundancy.

For additional redundancy on the DVD's/CD's, you might consider
Dvdisaster (http://dvdisaster.net/en/index.html) as well as your
current "overlapping" process.

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#4965

On Thu, 18 Sep 2014 11:55:10 +0000 (UTC)
Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:

> RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> wrote:
> > But my pictures and movies I burn to DVDs or CDs every few months,
> > each time starting from the present and going back as far as I can
> > while still fitting on the disk. That way there's always some overlap
> > and multiple disks have part of that overlap, affording me some
> > redundancy.
> 
> For additional redundancy on the DVD's/CD's, you might consider
> Dvdisaster (http://dvdisaster.net/en/index.html) as well as your
> current "overlapping" process.


Yes, Scott mentioned it above and it caught my attention.  I'm going to
have to take some time to figure it out, but I'm already interested.
Thanks for providing a link.

I'm put off by all this talk about optical media being obsolete.  It's
saved my bacon more than once - you just have to understand its
limitations and organize yourself in a way that compensates for it.
New hardware doesn't usually have a CD reader in it anymore, so I've
gone out and bought an external one to ensure I can continue to burn
disks.  Hell, at less than $1 per disk these days it's not even that
much money.

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#4975

RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Sep 2014 11:55:10 +0000 (UTC)
> Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:

> > RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> wrote:
> > > But my pictures and movies I burn to DVDs or CDs every few months,
> > > each time starting from the present and going back as far as I can
> > > while still fitting on the disk. That way there's always some overlap
> > > and multiple disks have part of that overlap, affording me some
> > > redundancy.
> > 
> > For additional redundancy on the DVD's/CD's, you might consider
> > Dvdisaster (http://dvdisaster.net/en/index.html) as well as your
> > current "overlapping" process.

> Yes, Scott mentioned it above and it caught my attention.  I'm going to
> have to take some time to figure it out, but I'm already interested.
> Thanks for providing a link.

Your welcome.  It uses part of the storage space on the disk
(configurable) to store reed-solomon error correcting data such that a
percentage of the disk can be unreadable and yet you can still recover
all the data you wrote to the disk.

It also handles the "recovery" process should you need to recover a
disk.

It is to help against the "disk-rot" effect that plagues so many
writable optical media.  Over time, the dyes "rot" away sufficiently
that you can't read everything from the disk anymore.  Thankfully, for
disks where this does happen, it is usually a slow process and happens
for only small parts at a time.  So provided you test read the disks
occasionally, you can recover from rot before all it lost.

Or at least that is the intent.  If you never ever test the old disks,
you'll never know if they are readable or not, until you need them, and
then, if the answer is not, you end up stuck.

> Hell, at less than $1 per disk these days it's not even that much
> money.

It is also just about your only option beyond building a raid array
backup server to do backups of todays datasets when one is usually on
dialup (you've mentioned your dialup situation before).  Online backup
is just not an option at dialup speeds.

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#4977

Rich wrote:

>> Hell, at less than $1 per disk these days it's not even that much
>> money.
> 
> It is also just about your only option beyond building a raid array
> backup server to do backups of todays datasets when one is usually on
> dialup (you've mentioned your dialup situation before).  Online backup
> is just not an option at dialup speeds.
> 

There are also several brands that offer "archival" quality media.  Some 
friends swear by them but I have no personal experience with their 
lifetimes.  My backups are frequent enough that I get a media check fairly 
often so I don't sweat it.  

One of those friends claims to have useable DVDs that are in the 10-year age 
range using even the early extended life media but you know how that goes: 
the first liar doesn't stand a chance ;-)

-- 
Will Honea

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#4984

On 2014-09-18, Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
> RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, 18 Sep 2014 11:55:10 +0000 (UTC)
>> Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
>
>> > RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> wrote:
>> > > But my pictures and movies I burn to DVDs or CDs every few months,
>> > > each time starting from the present and going back as far as I can
>> > > while still fitting on the disk. That way there's always some overlap
>> > > and multiple disks have part of that overlap, affording me some
>> > > redundancy.
>> > 
>> > For additional redundancy on the DVD's/CD's, you might consider
>> > Dvdisaster (http://dvdisaster.net/en/index.html) as well as your
>> > current "overlapping" process.
>
>> Yes, Scott mentioned it above and it caught my attention.  I'm going to
>> have to take some time to figure it out, but I'm already interested.
>> Thanks for providing a link.
>
> Your welcome.  It uses part of the storage space on the disk
> (configurable) to store reed-solomon error correcting data such that a
> percentage of the disk can be unreadable and yet you can still recover
> all the data you wrote to the disk.

Ah that's interesting.  For many years I was using a backup solution with
built in CRC (and used by default) and having seen how effective that was
with tapes throwing read errors I rather miss it.  Once tape drives which
supported their own CRC came out various folks started to recommend
switching off the CRC in the backup utility but the latter represented the
full path from disk to tape so I stuck with it (and had systems powerful
enough that it wasn't a performance issue).

> It also handles the "recovery" process should you need to recover a
> disk.

Good to hear.  A recovery process that is tricky to use gets too close to
performing write-only backups.

> It is to help against the "disk-rot" effect that plagues so many
> writable optical media.  Over time, the dyes "rot" away sufficiently
> that you can't read everything from the disk anymore.  Thankfully, for
> disks where this does happen, it is usually a slow process and happens
> for only small parts at a time.  So provided you test read the disks
> occasionally, you can recover from rot before all it lost.

We were discussing deduplication of backups a couple of weeks ago and I
came to the conclusion that redundancy isn't such a bad thing.
Bit rot on the backups could mean that a vital block present across many
backups and deduplicated to one copy only could make life difficult.

> Or at least that is the intent.  If you never ever test the old disks,
> you'll never know if they are readable or not, until you need them, and
> then, if the answer is not, you end up stuck.
>
>> Hell, at less than $1 per disk these days it's not even that much
>> money.

I was sure they cost substantially cost more here, at least the last time
I looked, but I can get stacks of 50 or 100 at that price (just not any
more in high street outlets).

> It is also just about your only option beyond building a raid array
> backup server to do backups of todays datasets when one is usually on
> dialup (you've mentioned your dialup situation before).  Online backup
> is just not an option at dialup speeds.

It often isn't a viable option at the lower broadband speeds either.

-- 
Ernesto "Che" Guevera, commonly known as el Che, was an Argentinian
t-shirt tycoon.                                  -- TL;DR Wikipedia

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#4994

Paul Sture wrote:

> Ah that's interesting.  For many years I was using a backup solution with
> built in CRC (and used by default) and having seen how effective that was
> with tapes throwing read errors I rather miss it.  Once tape drives which
> supported their own CRC came out various folks started to recommend
> switching off the CRC in the backup utility but the latter represented the
> full path from disk to tape so I stuck with it (and had systems powerful
> enough that it wasn't a performance issue).
> 

Although the original application was for tape backups, one job I was given 
some (many) years back was to authenticate backups for some highly important 
military files.  As you point out, the tape units of the day had CRC built-
in as well as recorded on the media but virtually all error correcting 
schemes have limits to the number/placement of errors on the media.  The 
solution we used for several years on the tapes as well as the follow-on 
generations of floppies and hard drives.  The idea was simple: 2 backups to 
different physical media (usually of the same type).  A verified restore 
source was assumed if the backup media could be read and the CRCs of the 
restore stream matched.  If not, we would then read both media copies and do 
an in-line compare of the incremental CRCs for the two streams.  That would 
identify the location of the error as the point at which the mismatch 
appeared and gave us a much finer definition of the error.

Slow, not perfect, but it was a major improvement in recovery of some pretty 
nasty backup errors.  Such strategies exist and I assume that they could be 
applied to any medium chosen.  The major drawback is that recovery from data 
errors - at any point in the process - is planning and preparation.

-- 
Will Honea

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#4987

In article <lvfpbe$73i$1@dont-email.me>, Rich  <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
>It is to help against the "disk-rot" effect that plagues so many
>writable optical media.  Over time, the dyes "rot" away sufficiently
>that you can't read everything from the disk anymore.  Thankfully, for
>disks where this does happen, it is usually a slow process and happens
>for only small parts at a time.  So provided you test read the disks
>occasionally, you can recover from rot before all it lost.

On the topic of bit rot, it's worth noting that BD-R, at least in its
original formulation, doesn't use dye in its recording layer.  Instead, it's
a metal layer whose reflectivity changes when the laser melts it:

Cribbing from http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?s=9e0134e3d9252a954fbb853381c43f39&p=34805422&postcount=3:

>BD-R discs don't use a dye system, partly due to the lack of a satisfactory
>dye, and concerns about finding one, but more importantly, because the
>designers of teh [sic] system had some concerns about the stability of the
>available dyes.  The problem of making high power lasers had been
>long-solved, so the decision was made to switch from dye recording
>technology.  Instead of a dye, BD-R uses copper plated silicon as a
>recording layer.  When heated with a high-power laser, the layers melt and
>fuse into a non-reflective alloy.  This alloy technology is believed to be
>hugely more stable than dye technology.  (But this doesn't say anythign
>about the stability of the unrecorded layer, manufacturing quality of the
>disc, etc.)

This should make BD-R an inherently more stable archival medium than CD-R or
DVD-R.  Throwing a wrench into the equation, however, is BD-R LTH
(low-to-high), a slightly cheaper version:

>BD-R LTH, is essentially a dye based version of BD-R. It's not compatible
>with existing blu-ray drives/players (although firmware updates enabling
>compatibility may be available for some devices).  As it's dye based, it
>can be made on CD-R/DVD-R manufacturing equipment, while BD-R discs can't. 
>Also, as a dye based technology, there are some uncertainties about
>long-term stability.  In reality, for most purposes, the stability of good
>quality dye discs should be adequate.

I'd recommend avoiding BD-R LTH for archival purposes.  You're not going to
save that much money.  BD-R HTL & dvdisaster might be a bit of a
belt-and-suspenders approach, but when it's (for instance) your wedding
photos on the line, the extra security is worth the minimal extra cost (5
discs vs. 4).

  _/_
 / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( http://alfter.us/            Top-posting!
 \_^_/                              >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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#4992

Scott Alfter <scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us> wrote:
> In article <lvfpbe$73i$1@dont-email.me>, Rich  <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
> On the topic of bit rot, it's worth noting that BD-R, at least in its
> original formulation, doesn't use dye in its recording layer.  Instead, it's
> a metal layer whose reflectivity changes when the laser melts it:

Thanks for pointing this out.  I had not kept up with the BD-R world,
and simply assumed that because both CD and DVD recordables used a dye
layer, that the same tech. had simply been carried over.  And your
reference to LTH implies that some makers are trying to "just carry it
over".

But that does seem like it should make BD-R bit-rot resistant, at least
to the same sort of bit-rot that plagues DVD-R and CD-R disks.

There could still be other factors that might make BD-R rot bits, but
at least with a melted metal alloy substrate, dye breakdown is not one
of those factors.

> I'd recommend avoiding BD-R LTH for archival purposes.  You're not
> going to save that much money.  BD-R HTL & dvdisaster might be a bit
> of a belt-and-suspenders approach, but when it's (for instance) your
> wedding photos on the line, the extra security is worth the minimal
> extra cost (5 discs vs. 4).

True.  Although for the wedding photos, it's not a bad idea to also
periodically just create another set of 5, just to be sure....

I could look it up, yes, but, what is the typical per disk cost of a
BD-R HTL disk?

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#4996

In article <lvhtth$1o9$1@dont-email.me>, Rich  <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
>I could look it up, yes, but, what is the typical per disk cost of a
>BD-R HTL disk?

Last time I bought some, about 80¢ per disc:

http://www.digistor.com/Blu-ray-Recordable-Media/25GB-BD-R?menu=products

These LTH discs are actually more expensive, at about $1.25 each:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817130187

A bit of digging turned up this inexpensive (72¢ ea.) option at Newegg that
might be HTL:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182259

  _/_
 / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( http://alfter.us/            Top-posting!
 \_^_/                              >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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#4968

In article <lveh6u$q9n$1@dont-email.me>, Rich  <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
>RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> wrote:
>> But my pictures and movies I burn to DVDs or CDs every few months,
>> each time starting from the present and going back as far as I can
>> while still fitting on the disk. That way there's always some overlap
>> and multiple disks have part of that overlap, affording me some
>> redundancy.
>
>For additional redundancy on the DVD's/CD's, you might consider
>Dvdisaster (http://dvdisaster.net/en/index.html) as well as your
>current "overlapping" process.

This.  Up to 20% of my BD-Rs can rot away before they become unrecoverable.
(You can set dvdisaster to a lesser amount of redundancy, but at 20%, I
still get 20 GB of usable space per BD-R.)

  _/_
 / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( http://alfter.us/            Top-posting!
 \_^_/                              >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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#4967

In article <6858#39341@usenet.squte.com>, RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> wrote:
>Tarsnap is great for Unix platforms (I'm looking at it for a BSD server at  
>the moment) but it doesn't run on Windows without Cygwin

I'd argue that Windows is unusable without Cygwin, but maybe that's just me.

(I'm typing this in a Cygwin window, ssh'd into a VPS.)

  _/_
 / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( http://alfter.us/            Top-posting!
 \_^_/                              >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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#4988

On 2014-09-17, Chris J Dixon <chris@cdixon.me.uk> wrote:
> As a subscriber to Office 365, I get effectively unlimited (1TB)
> OneDrive space, so am wondering if I should make use of it as my
> off-site backup. Local backup is already well sorted.

Hey, as long as you have no problem with not knowing where your data
is going to wind up or who is going to have access to it under what
conditions, why not? (We can all trust Microsoft, right?)

> Any experiences or alternative strategies out there?

Local backup media stored in a trusted location offsite.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Roger Blake (Change "invalid" to "com" for email. Google Groups killfiled.)

  NSA sedition and treason -- http://www.DeathToNSAthugs.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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#4998

Roger Blake wrote:

>On 2014-09-17, Chris J Dixon <chris@cdixon.me.uk> wrote:
>> As a subscriber to Office 365, I get effectively unlimited (1TB)
>> OneDrive space, so am wondering if I should make use of it as my
>> off-site backup. Local backup is already well sorted.
>
>Hey, as long as you have no problem with not knowing where your data
>is going to wind up or who is going to have access to it under what
>conditions, why not? (We can all trust Microsoft, right?)

So what other providers meet your criteria?
>
>> Any experiences or alternative strategies out there?
>
>Local backup media stored in a trusted location offsite.

I run plenty of local backups, but have no practical offsite
storage available.

Chris
-- 
Chris J Dixon  Nottingham UK
chris@cdixon.me.uk

Plant amazing Acers.

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#5035

On 2014-09-20, Chris J Dixon <chris@cdixon.me.uk> wrote:
> So what other providers meet your criteria?

None. I really don't like the idea of losing control of my data, so
I keep it backed up in a manner 100% under my control.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Roger Blake (Change "invalid" to "com" for email. Google Groups killfiled.)

  NSA sedition and treason -- http://www.DeathToNSAthugs.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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#5040

Roger Blake wrote:

>On 2014-09-20, Chris J Dixon <chris@cdixon.me.uk> wrote:
>> So what other providers meet your criteria?
>
>None. I really don't like the idea of losing control of my data, so
>I keep it backed up in a manner 100% under my control.

You are fortunate that you can achieve this.

Chris
-- 
Chris J Dixon  Nottingham UK
chris@cdixon.me.uk

Plant amazing Acers.

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