this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
0 points (50.0% liked)

Data Hoarder

24 readers
1 users here now

We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

founded 10 months ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
0
how do you know if a backup is dead (even if you have multiple copies) (alien.top)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
15 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I read many posts talking about importance of having multiple copies. but the problem is, even if you have multiple copies, how do you make sure that EVERY FILE in each copy is good. For instance, imagine you want to view a photo taken a few years ago, when you checkout copy 1 of your backup, you find it already corrupted. Then you turn to copy 2/3, find this photo is good. OK you happily discard copy 1 of backup and keep 2/3. Next day you want to view another photo 2, and find that photo 2 in backup copy 2 is dead but good in copy 3, so you keep copy 3, discard copy 3. Now some day you find something is wrong in copy 3, and you no longer have any copies with everything intact.

Someone may say, when we find that some files for copy 1 are dead, we make a new copy 4 from copy 2 (or 3), but problem is, there are already dead files in this copy 2, so this new copy would not solve the issue above.

Just wonder how do you guys deal with this issue? Any idea would be appreciated.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

dedicated software that can create verifiable historical backup files. Like Veeam or Macrium, or the new generation like Duplicacy, Arq, Borg, etc. All of them have integrity verification integrated.