Simplify to If you only have a sole backup, think again. Points 4 and 5 should be you always have more than one backup of important material and at least one backup should be on physical media that you own.
> Simplify to If you only have a sole backup, think again.
Yep. 3-2-1: "At least three copies, in two different formats, with one of those copies off-site."
- How far away are your office and home?
- What is your locality?
As an example, I don't live in a place prone to earthquakes or hurricanes, and my office is a 20 ~ 30 min drive from my home. What is the risk that both my office and home are destroyed?
- Simply copying your data to a second hard drive in the same machine protects against hard drive failure.
- Second disconnected hard drive protects you from ransom-viruses and accidental erasures.
- Second disconnected hard drive on the other side of the house gives you some protection from a fire (caught early enough).
- Second disconnected hard drive in another building some distance away protects against small disasters (eg. randomly directed tornado).
- Second disconnected hard drive in another region protects against large disasters (eg. single nuclear strike).
- Second disconnected hard drive in another country protects against national disasters (eg. invasion, multiple nuclear strikes).
- Second disconnected hard drive on another continent protects against major disasters (eg. moderate asteroid impact event)
...and so on. But all of these can be protected against by simply having 3 backups.
Except bit rot. That shit's inevitable.
> - Second disconnected hard drive in another country protects against national disasters (eg. invasion, multiple nuclear strikes).
> - Second disconnected hard drive on another continent protects against major disasters (eg. moderate asteroid impact event)
I'm not really sure if worrying about my hard drive will be something high on the priority list in many of these events.