Recently I have decided that the backup solution I have been using is far too complex for my family to figure out when I die. I began writing documentation on how they can access photos, videos, documents and so on. In that process I thought, I gotta make this simple.
I’m thinking of just having two 10TB drives in RAID 1 on my desktop that get backed up to Backblaze via restic. Backblaze and similar cloud storage providers can send you a copy of your data for recovery. I think I can sufficiently document this process.
Has anyone else come up with a similar process?
All of our data is backed up 2N+C - two NASes and an encrypted rclone in S3. This includes family videos, photos, and all “paper” records (Paperless-ngx for the win).
I’ve documented my homelab in Joplin, and stored all my homelab passwords (and Bitwarden password) in a Keypass database. Those files are stored on a USB stick in our household safe, along with a printed letter instructing my wife to pass everything on to one of my brothers.
The first half of my homelab manual details how to return our smart home to un-smart. The second half contains detailed technical data on how my entire home network hangs together.
I’m currently thinking about some sort of dead man’s switch, where copies of the letter and files from the USB stick are auto-emailed to my wife and both my brothers in the event I don’t check in for a period of time - say two weeks or so. That way, should the house burn down with only me in it, my wife will still be able to get to all of our records and memories.
This is on par with what i do with the addition of two external hard drives. One with my stuff (server+personal) and one when her stuff (personal). I can recover shit in multiple ways and if she needs to she just grabs the external and plugs it into a laptop.
I run a lot of tech, containerized workloads in AWS, home firewalls running on protectli boxes for all my family around the country, wireless controllers to run APs for my family around the country, but as I got older one thing I stopped rolling my own instance of was data backups. My data backs up to OneDrive and iDrive, so two copies of my data. My wife has access to both via shared credentials in a 1password folder that she knows how to access and uses regularly.
As I got older and I had a family, the pictures of our kids, wills, financial records, insurance documents are all just too important. Every service that holds my data is paid annually for less than $200/year total and auto renews. She could call either company and prove ownership if she ever did need help getting access. Also, I can easily share folders to her.
It’s funny how getting older makes you think of the sorts of issues enterprise teams have. Don’t implement solutions where you will be one deep, have a succession plan, and complexity is the enemy. All the tech I run now is fun and helpful, but can be replaced with a trip to BestBuy. The data and pictures however must be easy to retrieve for her.
So I don’t have a good self hosted solution for you other than to say that at some point it’s ok to change your strategy. And if you are worried about privacy, you can encrypt subsets of your data locally before it is backed up.
You know how you need to test any backup solution? This is the same. Have anyone that you’re expecting to do this run through the process entirely from your documentation. If they can’t, adjust the doc/process until they can. Then include that with your will, or with other documents people will be looking through in the event of your death.
I don’t self host to the extent many here seem too but I have had the same thought and joked with my wife about it.
Ultimately everything I’ve setup I’ve done in part because it’s my hobby and it interests me. When I’m gone my family will revert to whatever they’d normally be doing without me, because they don’t have interest in it like I do.
From a security perspective, it isn’t ideal, but a simple unencrypted external drive might be the best solution.
Slight tangent, but I recently cleaned out the house of a parent after they passed away. There were boxes and boxes of family photo albums. We kept them for a while out of guilt, but we really didn’t know anyone in the photos aside from one or two people. Eventually we got rid of them. Point being the value of your stuff is probably far less to others then it is to you, especially photos to future generations.
Label those pictures though, they are more useful. When my grandma died we showed her old photos to a man who looked at one and said, that is my mom, I never saw a.picture of mom before she was married before. However if my grandma hadn’t labeled the pictures it would be some girl nobody knew 70 years later ’
This is a nice theory, but remember people don’t always die in order. If you pass away before your parents, they will almost certainly appreciate your photos. If you die before your spouse, they will need access to documents and will appreciate photos as well.
In a “hit by a bus” scenario, you don’t get a chance to migrate things away from your self-hosted solution, and those you leave behind most likely are not exclusively “future gemerations”.
I don’t have a solution really, but I’m also thinking along your lines.
For files I share with my girlfriend, I have set up syncthing. So my server and our phones have a copy of the files, I like this solution. But it wouldn’t work for large amounts of data.
For my server stuff, it is backed up encrypted on backblaze. so I guess that is lost. Most files are also rsynced onto a usb drive connected to a raspberry pi (not encrypted). So that should be accessible, except for a linux’y filesystem (probably ext4) that doesn’t work on windows
I want the opposite. I want all of my data to be completely inaccessible to anyone, and potentially even self-destruct somehow.
To be honest, I don’t care. After all, why? I’ll be dead, I won’t care. You can leak it all then. Just make sure I am actually dead.
I’m sure that really depends on the data.
If we’re talking about stuff like family photos, then having it retrievable feels pretty reasonable to me.
Besides the technical stuff you should probably write that ownership transfers to your spouse and kids into your will. Maybe even write part of your backblaze or even password manager password into the will and the other part in a safety deposit box.
Much easier and quicker for your family to gain access if they have the password than if they have to proof that they are next of kin.
Tape drive to USB are a great solution.
I’m sorry, I’m ignorant.
Are home data hoarders using tape drives in 2023?
The space per $ is unbeatable & they are surprisingly durable and long lasting. Snazzy Labs on YouTube has a good video on the subject if interested.
Well, we will all miss you in the event of your death. Anyway maybe you could find a family friend that’s tech savey.
Honestly, maybe having it also backup to a consumer grade external HDD enclosure. As much as it pains to say. But like one of those WD mybook things or similar. Designed to be dead simple for the average person.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters AP WiFi Access Point NAS Network-Attached Storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 13 acronyms.
[Thread #333 for this sub, first seen 3rd Dec 2023, 22:25] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
deleted by creator
Encrypted file with all the necessary instructions inside (sensitive passwords excluded, these should be on paper only). Encryption key part of a separate bitwarden account with a takeover feature for a few loved ones. That’s my setup anyway.
