Good Secure Backups Developers at Home [closed]

Answer 1

Setup a Linux or xBSD server:

-Setup a source control system of your choice on it.
--Mirror Raid (raid 1) at min
--Daily (or even hourly) backups to external drive[s].

From the server you could also setup an automatic offsite backup. If the internet is out, you'd still have your external drive and just have it auto sync once it comes back.

Once it's setup it should be about 0 work.

You don't need anything "fancy" for offsite backup. Get a webhost that allows storing non-web data. sync via sftp or rsync over ssh. Store data on other end in true crypt container if your paranoid.

If you work for an employeer/contractor also ask them. Most places already have something in place or let you work with their IT.

Answer 2

Buy a fire-safe. This is not just a good idea for storing backups, but a good idea period.

Exactly what media you put in it is the subject of other answers here.

But, from the perspective of recovering from a fire, having a washable medium is good. As long as the temperature doesn't get too high CDs and DVDs seem reasonably resilient, although I'd be concerned about smoke damage. Ditto for hard-drives.

A flash drive does have the benefit that there are no moving parts to be damaged and you don't need to be concerned about the optical properties.

Answer 3

Bacula is a good software, it's open source, and shall give good performance, kind of commercial software, a bit difficult the first time to configure, but not so hard. It has good documentation

Answer 4

Depends on which platform you are running on (Windows/Linux/Mac/...?)

As a platform independent way, I use a personal subversion server. All the valuables are there, so if I lose one of the machines, a simple 'svn checkout' will take things back. This takes some initial work, though, and requires discipline. It might not be for you?

As a second backup for the non-svn stuff, I use Time Machine, which is built-in to OS X. Simply great. :)

Answer 5

usb hard disk + rsync works for me

(see here for a Win32 build)

Answer 6

First of all: keeping backups off-site is as important for individuals as it is for businesses. If you house burns down, you don't want to loose everything.

This is especially true because it is so easy to accomplish. Personally, I have an external USB harddisk I keep at my fathers house. Normally, it is hooked up to his internet connections and I backup over the net (using rsync), but when I need to backup really big things, I collect it and copy things over USB. Ideally, I should get another disk, to spread the risk. Other options are free online storage facilities (use encryption!).

For security, just use TrueCrypt. It has a good name in the IT world, and seems to work very well.