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  • This is my NAS. This is where I put all my video projects, and a whole lot more. For

  • a long time, I just had one copy of everything.

  • That's... not great. If there was a fire, all my data would be gone. Or what if Red

  • Shirt Jeff pulled one of my hard drives and ramset a nail through it?

  • Dramatic, I know, but in either case the data would be toast! So now I have a backup. And

  • actually I have more than one! Backups aren't just when you plug in a hard drive and copy

  • stuff to it. If you're doing it that way, you're doin it

  • wrong!

  • You might be saying, "Jeff, all my photos are in the cloud, and I do all my email, spreadsheets

  • and stuff online. My stuff's already backed up!"

  • WRONG!

  • First, the cloud is just someone else's computer, and second, you still need backups, and to

  • tell you why, let's start with the basics:

  • One, two, three.

  • Well, it's a tiny bit more advanced than that. It's the same thing, but backwards. Any data

  • you care about should be backed up following a 3-2-1 backup plan.

  • You should have 3 copies of all your important data. 2 of those copies should be on different

  • storage media. And at least 1 of those copies should be offsite, somewhere physically distant.

  • If you're relying on Google Drive or iCloud or something like that, that's just one copy.

  • You should still have two more copies, if you wanna be safe.

  • But what's important data?

  • Is it this scan of an old essay about computers from when I was in grade school? Is it this

  • old picture of my Dad teaching me how to ride a bike from the 80s?

  • Well, important data is subjective. It's different for everyone. But I'm sure you have some things,

  • like family photos or important documents you care about.

  • If you wanna make sure you don't lose those files, you need to cover all three parts of

  • the 3-2-1 backup plan.

  • And if you think you're somehow covered by using fancy RAID setups or ZFS snapshots on

  • a single storage array, you're not. Repeat it after me: RAID is NOT a backup! RAID is

  • helpful in many cases, especially if you have a huge amount of data to store, but it doesn't

  • matter if you have a NAS in RAID 10 or something like thatit still only counts as one copy,

  • and you need two more to be safe.

  • I'll show show you how I backup all my data, and hopefully you can get some inspiration

  • for ways to improve your own backups.

  • The most important thing I did before I bought my NAS I took an inventory, so I knew what

  • I was going to back up and how much storage I needed.

  • All my data can be lumped into six categories: photos, music, documents in my Dropbox, local

  • files outside my Dropbox, all my open source projects, and finally, my massive video library.

  • For each category, I follow the 3-2-1 backup plan.

  • My photo library, with over 70,000 RAW files, is more than a terabyte. I have thousands

  • of files from paid photo shoots, and thousands more of my growing family, so the library's

  • priceless to me.

  • I store one copy on my Mac locally, with all the original photos. Another copy's on my

  • NAS via Time Machine backup, and the third remote backup is to my iCloud Photo Library.

  • Some people hate it, but the convenience of something like Apple or Google's cloud libraryassuming

  • you have an iPhone or Androidis life-changing.

  • In terms of trust, I know I'll get some sour comments, but I've been using iCloud since

  • it was iTools, and lived through the horrible abomination known as MobileMe. But you know

  • what? Because I also keep at least two other backups, I've never lost an image.

  • Moving on to my Music library, I have a lot of independent and children's music that isn't

  • on Apple Music or Spotify. I use Apple's iCloud Music Library and iTunes Match, and have all

  • the original files on my Mac and a Time Machine backup to be safe.

  • Important files like old schoolwork and business documents are in my Dropbox. That's all stored

  • locally, on my NAS via Time Machine, and on Dropbox. And for anyone about to comment about

  • how I should try out Nextcloud, don't worry, it's in the works. I haven't been too impressed

  • with Dropbox for the past few years.

  • Some other local files are only backed up on my NAS via Time Machine. So there's a small

  • hole here, but it's only temporary, since most of those files are things like OS images

  • that I could re-download.

  • My open source projects are a little more complicated. Almost all of them are on my

  • Mac, since that's my main workspace. That's backed up to my NAS, but I don't have every

  • project on my Mac.

  • Even if I did, my Mac might not always have the latest code, since I don't do all my work

  • on my main Mac.

  • So I have a separate backup on my NAS that uses Gickup. Cool aside: Gickup was created

  • by GitHub user cooperspencer after he saw me tweeting about code backups. It was really

  • cool to see this nice flexible Git backup tool created just from that Tweet!

  • So now I have one copy on my Mac, another copy guaranteed to be up to date on the NAS,

  • and a third copy, the source of truth, on GitHub.

  • Finally, I have all my video content. After this channel started blowing up last year,

  • backing up all my video projects got a lot more important!

  • I went from maybe having ten or twenty gigabytes of video a year to having five terabytes this

  • year.

  • Once I put my new NAS in service, I got more serious about backups.

  • I usually had two copies of most things, but they were spread out over a bunch of hard

  • drives, with no automation or documentation. But that's all changed. Now I have one copy

  • on my primary NAS, a synchronized copy on a backup NAS, and a third copy in the cloud.

  • And that's coordinated through this Raspberry Pi, my "backup" Pi.

  • I back up over 6 terabytes of data to AWS Glacier using `rclone`. `rclone`'s an open

  • source tool for synchronizing stuff to and from any cloud storage provider, like Backblaze,

  • Google, or AWS.

  • I store my backup in Glacier because it's cheap. Like, really, really cheap. I pay $4

  • a month to back up 6 terabytes. Before you rush to the comments, I know, restores with

  • Glacier can take a while to start and they cost more since they're offline, but you gotta

  • remember: the Glacier backup is for major emergencies only. Things have to be pretty

  • badlike a nuclear attack, a burned down house, or a Red Shirt Jeff rampagebefore

  • I'd need to use it!

  • But back to the Pi; it also runs Gickup, and the Pi logs everything so I can make sure

  • backups are running.

  • There are a thousand other ways to implement a good backup plan, and great software like

  • restic, arq, borg, and crashplane! I'm a video maker and developer, so my plan is probably

  • a lot different than yours. Maybe you could just get by with two external hard drives,

  • rotating them out in a remote location for the third copy.

  • But people tend to have a lotta data nowadays. Maybe that's you! Instead of relying on a

  • preinstalled backup app or a manual single-drive backups, you should take a data inventory,

  • write up a backup plan, and use robust backup tools to make sure you're covered top-to-bottom.

  • For my own plan, I created this open source repo, and it has my entire plan and includes

  • all the automation I use for my backups.

  • Even if this whole network rack got Thanos-snapped out of existence right now, I'd be okay since

  • everything's backed up and documented, and almost everything's automated.

  • But my plan's not perfect. An important counterpart is a disaster recovery plan. For a lot of

  • my data, I kind of wimp out and say "I'll cross that bridge if I ever need to."

  • But you know the worst possible time to test a disaster recovery plan? In the middle of

  • a disaster!

  • If my house burns down, I have to ask how long would it take before I could be productive

  • again, at least in terms of my data.

  • Would it take a day? A week? The only way to really know is to make a plan, and test

  • the plan. And I've only done a little of that.

  • To truly rest easy, you have to have great backups following a 3-2-1 plan, and test your

  • recovery process. I still have other holes in my plan, too.

  • Some devices like my network router and switches have custom configurations that aren't automatically

  • backed up.

  • It's hard to automate configuration or backups for most consumer networking gear, but I can

  • always do better. And I think that's the theme with backups: you can always do better. I

  • hope something in this video helped you fill a hole in your own plan.

  • If you're not backing up anything at all, at least go buy a hard drive and back up your

  • computer. Windows has Backup and Recovery, Mac OS has Time Machine, and Linux haswell,

  • a lotta different optionsbut most of them are easy to use. And if you're already using

  • a hard drive or NAS, maybe also back up to a cloud service, or rotate out two backup

  • drives.

  • We can all improve our backupsit's a never ending journey. The key is to find a place

  • you're comfortable. I'll conclude by saying there are two types

  • of people in this world: people who have lost important data before, and people who will

  • lose important data. In both cases, people with a good backup plan sleep easier at night.

  • Well, that is unless they have a nightmare about Red Shirt Jeff running around with a

  • nail gun!

  • Until next time, I'm Jeff Geerling.

This is my NAS. This is where I put all my video projects, and a whole lot more. For

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