For Non-techies

Backups

Terms/Concepts

• Redundant:  Have multiple concurrent places/devices for your backups.  This could be important if, for instance, that single 10 year old external drive dies at the same time as your laptop.  :-)

• Resilient:  I hate to be "morbid", but this is an often over looked factor.  That backup drive on your desk won't do any good if the house burns down or a burglar takes all the electronics on your desk or the cat spills your tea on it.  

• Realistic:  Be truthful for what you can do to make the backups.  Don't say you'll do it manually every weekend when you know you won't.

Considerations

• Leaving a backup on your desk is not resilient, even if you have drives of different ages.  Think about a cloud backup or a fire-proof safe; I prefer the former.

• Everyone can't afford or may not want a fire-proof safe or using the cloud.  So a friend's house?  Just be careful about being realistic (getting the backup there).  Also, consider that you might have one drive on your desk and another at a friend's house. If both your laptop and local drive are stolen, there will be some days you may have lost data (length of redundancy).

• Manually copying files may not be realistic.  Manually uploading files to the cloud may not be realistic.  If you can't find trusted free solutions and can't build/write your own scripts, think about buying something.

Making A Choice

So I hope you can make some choices.  At some point I hope to post some software to use.  For now, what I do is:

• One external drive that is about 5 years old

• One external drive that is about 1.5 years old

• Run an rsync command from local to each drive.

• Manually copy files to Google Drive

• Manually export other Google Drive files to a backup folder

This can be a bit complicated because the Google Drive download are compressed file of specific folders.  I try not to upload files to the same location I download.  But worrying too much impacts my sanity.  So there are duplicates (extra space is used on the external drives).

Routers & Passwords

Most folks have heard of Botnot's by now. While they could be run from your computer, they can also be run from your router.  And back in the day (2010) when routers were first becoming common, some folks never changed passwords nor updated.  In fact, PCWorld had the article "Chuck Norris Botnet Karate-chops Routers Hard".  It is an interesting real-life example of why you should set a good password on your router.  

For those who just want a short synopsis… Just as your computer can get infected, so can routers. So ever wonder why security is important? Its for both your own protection (your computer and router) as well as others out on the web. This particular one infects your router, then looks to infect your own computer as well as attack others on the web. So, even though this targeted routers, the article says your computers (especially Windows users) could also be effected. Either keep your virus protection up-to-date and use a password/change the default password, or don’t use Windows and make sure your security updates are installed.