You just have to find some tools and services that are "fire and forget."
This is what I do:
1. All my working files are in my Dropbox account (or my corporate Dropbox account). I did this initially to support working off two machines interchangeably, but the fact of the matter is that this creates an easy versioned backup of your "live" files. Nowadays, my Dropbox is fully mirrored on TWO backup computers here in my office (ie, a spare machine and an old machine).
Setup Effort: Minimal. Ongoing Effort: Almost zero.
2. Because I use a Mac, I have Time Machine. It's glorious and can save your butt. It's the ONLY of these mechanisms I've ever had to use at scale (after a break-in and a stolen laptop). It worked flawlessly. Use it if you can. Every year or so, I get a new TM drive and archive the old one.
Setup Effort: VERY Minimal. Ongoing Effort: Zero.
3. I also use Backblaze for offsite backup security. I happen to live on the gulf coast, so major storms are a concern, but there's probably some house-eating danger wherever YOU live.
Setup Effort: Moderate. Ongoing Effort: Minimal.
4. Finally -- and this is the only part that needs actual action -- periodically I take a full image backup of my main machine's drive and archive it.
Setup Effort: Moderate. Ongoing Effort: Moderate.
I keep my newest image and my last TM drive in someone else's house, too, but that MAY be paranoia.
As an analogy, you might be the greatest surgeon in the world but you may still want to ask a nutritionist to help you make sense of the varying, contradictory studies that come in.
The problem you have identified also effects the cognitively overwhelmed which is all of us.
More generally, I guess the problem is that there's a lot of pain and duplicated effort all over the place due to there still not being a really good, well-supported, cross-FS and cross-OS file metadata scheme.
New school: get a Macbook and an iPhone and use iCloud.
For programmers: Make an auto-backup script to an S3 bucket for very cheap storage, backing up only what you want (e.g. adding a flag to ignore node_modules when backing up your computer).
https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_sync/
Configure cron jobs to run automatically so they dont have to do anything on their end. Even if you're on a mobile device, you can install a terminal emulator and run rclone there.
If money isn't an issue, BackBlaze's options are interesting. Check out Arq backup too. Once you get either Backblaze or Arq backup, you can backup your backup drive of time machine images. Not terribly efficient, sure, but again, doesn't really require too much configuration. Minimizing friction for each step and trying to automate them are the best paths to success.
If this is a mobile device, iCloud for photos is a good enough options for most people. Yeah, apple's gonna scan, but so is Google Photos, or any other service that uploads images to the internet.
I really wish apple would do an E2EE time machine to the cloud one day! That would really unlock backups for a lot more less technical people.
If you're somewhat capable you could even set it up so the entirety of your OneDrive or equivalent is copied to another provider.
- Data is destroyed
- Data is abused (somebody uses it against you in some way)
Disaster destroys, theft & ransomware destroys and/or abuses your data
Security against "abusing your data" is afaik: encrypting your data, using different passwords, never trust a link in an email (allways use the links you commonly use). BUT: this is difficult and unlikely done even by a average user.
Security against losing data is: backup or sync : backup is done best to my knowledge in apple devices. it also features sync. othervise i'd recommend dropbox, it can also recover some of the data you accidentially delete.
printing things is also still a good backup of important data
It's a paid solution but simple enough for my mother.
Assuming they're using files on a desktop computer, find a magic backup or sync product. They all have pros and cons.
I used to develop Syncplicity. It could backup "My Documents" and "Desktop" automatically, but you still had to manually add folders outside of those defaults. It was useful for a "magic backup" of things that could upload and download easily; but it wasn't going to just snapshot an entire computer.
If you want to snapshot an entire computer, a lot of posts in the thread recommend Time Machine for Mac. Just understand the tradeoffs: Do you want to snapshot the entire computer, but you don't care about "cloud" features? Do you want "cloud" features like sharing, backup even when you're not home, but you don't care about restoring a computer to an exact point in time?
> hook up to computer via spare USB port on the back
> set up automatic backups
> done!
It's my go-to for "not techie" parents and grandparents and never failed me with less than 10 minutes of active work. Pretty easy to migrate into new computers too.
(1)I distrust anything connected to the cloud more than I do stuff I can own.
General idea should be to treat the computer as a dispensable unit, kind of local cache of primary data which is remote. It is backwards, but this entrusts the "data" into more able and knowledgeable care.
As an example, look no further as mobile/smartphone etc. platforms. The locally acquired data is automatically transferred to some online cloud. All needed for that is a steady and fast internet and suffucient quotas.
Should the disaster hit, at least the bulk of "data" would be duplicated in the cloud(s). Assuming the cloud providers are mainstream, chances are the data could be retrievable from the new/repaired computer.
All comes down to the definition and the value of the "data".
Also, makes sense to have a practical way to keep an inventory of the installed and used applications and obviously the accounts/passwords.
If you just want to keep files and don't care about your OS, most cloud providers desktop clients work fine - Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc. And they have the added bonus of keeping things in sync across multiple machines, which allows for working across multiple devices, and also each instance is another backup of your files (provided it's set to actually download synced files immediatley, rather than on-demand, as OneDrive defaults to).
I have more experience with OneDrive than other providers, since I use it for work.
Pros:
- Two-stage recycle bin. If you delete a file, it goes in a recycle bin. If you delete it from there as well, it goes into another recyle bin & can still be restored.
- Can sync your Documents, Pictures and Desktop folders in addition to the OneDrive folder, at least on Windows.
Cons:
- Doesn't handle large numbers of files well. Syncing 1000+ 500KB files can take the better part of a day.
- Only downloads to the local machine on demand by default (but you can change this).
As a set-and-forget solution with a little more setup effort, a commercial NAS (think Synology, QNAP, etc) & their software for backing up your PC should work well. Many NAS's have a feature to back up your NAS (or a portion of your data) to a friends NAS - and they can back up their data on yours. Buy one for youself and your parents/grandparents, and then you all have offsite backups for the family photos. LTT has a good demo of this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpxBmxj5mP0
I think there is a minimum level of computer proficiency needed to utilise a backup solution. So many people don't understand the concept of files and folders, or a filesystem, and I imagine the managing backups would be a stretch for them, unless they spent some time learning about these concepts. If a university student can't understand that their work is saved in a folder and not in Word, they're going to have a hell of a time trying to use OneDrive.
If you have important files that are roughly ~100GB, Google Drive is only EUR 20 per year to upgrade from their 15Gb free tier to their 100GB offering. Again, a no-brainer.
If you're concerned about the privacy of your files on cloud services, then use Cryptomator[0].
Cryptomator is for more advanced users and you need to read the DOCs before using it. Personally though, I found the interface intuitive and I don't consider myself that smart (depending on your definition of that term).
I know many here will say thats being negligent or whatever, I don't really care too much, I'd rather just get on with my life than jump through a load of hoops for data that I'm not too fussed about losing.
I remember that DB famously had to make special provision for Outlook files — is that kind of thing still the case?
Setting this up is simple: the NAS manufacturer has an app for every OS. Install it on each device and follow the instructions. It's similarly simple to set up the cloud backup; just open the app on the NAS and enter the cloud storage credentials (it works with almost every provider).
Once this is set up there's no effort required.
Store your files in the dropbox folder and they will be safe (plus sync across devices and file history).
As a simple advice for protecting files from hard drive breakdown:
1. buy mac and use built-in timemachine backup (can be encrypted). Works like a charm, nothing to think about, nothing to worry (except keeping your backup drive in safe place).
2. sync important files to cloud (dropbox, googledrive whatever). But be aware that this way you create additional door to steal your data.
The absolute simplest option that i can think of: have a few large HDDs or SSDs that you connect to your device with an USB enclosure and copy over all of your data.
It's also reasonably simple to automate that process with something like cron and rsync. If it's not possible to automate that process, or it's too cumbersome, then just do it manually and keep a log somewhere.
Example:
2021.10.01 - copied over /home and /data to HDD1
2021.09.01 - copied over /home and /data to HDD3
2021.08.01 - copied over /home and /data to HDD2
2021.07.01 - copied over /home and /data to HDD1
2021.06.01 - copied over /home and /data to HDD3
2021.05.01 - copied over /home and /data to HDD2
...
+ doesn't take any advanced knowledge of software, software packages, or even require a specific OS
+ the backups are just files that you can view and copy just like you would with any other disk
+ if the devices have cloud storage clients installed, you can transparently also back up those
- somewhat tedious, especially if you don't set up a calendar reminder on your phone or something
- if you want redundant backups (say, on HDD1, HDD2, HDD3), then you'll need to copy the files multiple times
- all of your backups are probably in one place with this approach
If a slightly more complex solution is okay, then you might use some of the software that's out there, built with the purpose of automating backups. Some of the solutions are paid, others are free, but the general idea is the same - you set up some directories which you'd like to backup, you set a schedule and perhaps some rules on what to back up and how and let the software run whenever.
Example:
https://bvckup2.com/
https://bvckup.com/
+ allows automating backups, so human error is less of a factor
+ minimizes complexity as the amount of data that you need (or the count of locations) to backup increases
- depends on the platform, each OS will have their own pieces of software for something like this
- still not networked, unless you use a NAS or something similar (which you might consider at this point)
Now, this is a bit more complicated, but since any regular computer can become a server and since HDDs are pretty cheap anyways, spending a few days setting up a backup solution can sometimes be worth it, if the people can spend some time following guides or reading the documentation.
Essentially, you'd set up your own server, with an OS of your choice (personally i'd suggest Debian or Ubuntu LTS) and would install some software package, that could connect to the devices that you'd like to back up and would pull data from them at a set schedule. Alterting options are also available should anything go wrong.
Example:
https://backuppc.github.io/backuppc/
+ this can be a proper networked solution, which allows you to host it anywhere, away from your physical location
+ there can be some pretty useful deduplication functionality built into the software, as well as support for various connection methods
+ this can also give life to your old electronics, as opposed to contributing to e-waste
- if the backups work with a "pull" model, you'll need to configure access to all of the devices that you'd like to connect to, which can be troublesome
- furthermore, depending on how all of this is set up, security becomes more of a concern, as it is with any networked solution
- at this point, you're basically maintaining a server of your own
There are more complicated setups out there, such as file systems with snapshotting, RAID to avoid individual disk failures, storage pools etc., which may or may not be worth it, based on the complexity vs the benefit that they provide.
NAS solutions and cloud solutions for storage can also be explored, as long as security isn't forgotten about - for most people, both of those can be good options and can be combined with any of the alternatives.
Integrity is surprisingly hard to get right and as long as you have multiple backups of the same files over time, it's not always worth it to worry about it too much. Ideally, check the files that matter to you in the backups manually, like whether your master's thesis was backed up correctly.
Version control systems are also surprisingly nice for smaller files, like the aforementioned thesis - with something like GitLab and the aforementioned server backups, that introduces more redundancy and versioning in the mix, with tools that most developers will be familiar with.
Restoring backups is important, yet not often considered much. If you use something like BackupPC, you absolutely need to test whether you can properly download or restore the files that you've backed up into it, otherwise it's useless.
Lastly, you should remember the 3-2-1 rule of backups:
> The 3-2-1 rule can aid in the backup process. It states that there should be at least 3 copies of the data, stored on 2 different types of storage media, and one copy should be kept offsite, in a remote location.
In my experience, that's why file/archive based solutions are perhaps the best option, because they're easy to carry over to other storage mediums.
Not only that, but the above options actually combine with one another rather nicely. Right now, i use manual backups of the data that matters to me on my phone (connect through USB, transfer files monthly), use the backup software to automatically propagate my files across multiple drives, then use BackupPC to pull my files to a backup server, which also has multiple mirrored drives that incrementally synchronize with rsync and cron. Then i also use a few Nextcloud instances which copy my local files to my own VPSes, which coincidentally are also pulled down by BackupPC. And then i also copy some of my keychains and other important files on local storage mediums - SD cards or memory sticks, as well as encrypted containers on almost every device that i use (VeraCrypt). In my eyes, the simplest solutions that don't require specialized hardware are perhaps the best ones.
Thus, my risk analysis looks like this:
- if one of my HDDs/SSDs fail, i can pull a backup off of the spare drive
- if one of my devices fail (power surge etc.), i can pull a backup off of my backup server
- if my backup server fails (power surge etc.), i still have the most important data in Nextcloud, on my cloud VPSes
- if my cloud VPSes fail (banned etc.), i still have the data in various SD cards strewn around the place (as long as i can get VeraCrypt or KeePass working somehwere)
- if my cloud VPSes fail (banned etc.) and all of my local devices fail and my SD cards fail (house burns down etc.), i still have the cached Nextcloud data and encrypted stuff on my smartphone, which i keep with myself
- if all of the above were to fail, then it'd also be possible to just give a third party (trusted person) backed up drives every now and then
- if no such party is available, then it's possible to just upload encrypted backups to all of the cloud providers that you know of, for redundancy
- if all of the cloud providers have also failed, then you probably have bigger problems and backups are no longer relevant