I got a lot of interesting feedback & few questions. So, thought will send out a follow up.
Few emails asked about the model number of the drives. These are the exact models of 14TB Hard drive and 2TB boot drive we have ordered. We ordered this enclosure as well to make transferring files from the current boot disk easier. We haven't received them yet and so this is not an endorsement!
Few asked about what factors to optimize for when you setup your backup system/process. In exchanges with one friend, I came up with the acronym PRICE combining five factors that may give us a framework to think through. It stands for
- Portability: Do you want/need to be able to carry the data around with you?
- Reliability: If you are doing a business data backup, the system never going down will be very important "reliability" factor, and so you may want to use RAID (Redundant Array of Identical Disks) models that will increase uptime. For my home backup, uptime is not that important, but just being able to get lost files back will be sufficient. So, I didn't choose RAID to keep costs low. Using the 3-2-1 model I mentioned before, will help improve reliability for any kind of (home, business, personal) backup.
- Immunity: Think safety. Though it is much easier to buy cloud storage and backup everything there, I am not comfortable storing my sensitive files up there. What happens if the company goes out of business, get hacked, attacked for ransomware, or I (or my descendants) forget to pay the fee? Even if your files are encrypted & password protected, it may not be "quantum safe" as there are papers out there talking about state level actors copying all the data they can, including encrypted data, so that they can be decrypted and read when quantum computing becomes widespread & cheap. So, keeping sensitive files with yourself might give you better immunity, while you may still choose to keep non-sensitive files on cloud for easy access.
- Cost: If you want extremely high-speed access, you can go for expensive SDD (Solid State Drive). For ensuring high uptime, you can do RAID, etc. But for simple personal backup, what I am doing may be adequate.
- Ease of use: This is very important, since many of my tech friends tend to go for complicated setup that may be very good, but will be very hard for our family members to use, if we are not around (or worst-case we die). Ideally, this backup should be as easy as accessing a USB drive attached to your computer.
Taking these five factors into account, we can say we need to consider the PRICE when we think of (or don't maintain) Digital Hygiene!
Few asked about what files we should back up. Though answer to this question is "it depends", here is a list of what I am routinely backing up. Using it as a starting point, you can tweak the list to fit your needs:
- My university lecture slides, collection of many video clips I show during my lectures. (I do keep a copy online on Google drive, in case I lose my laptop on my way to give a lecture. Since the material is not confidential or sensitive (like financial documents, health records or password file), I don't mind keeping a copy in the cloud.
- My published/unpublished/WIP book/article files.
- Old code (this is more nostalgia than real use), grad school work, papers, PhD, MS thesis work, etc.
- Work related files/articles that we are legally allowed to keep on personal archives
- Personal financial documents, like tax returns, 401K, bank statements, etc.
- Family photos/videos
- Even old files like my uncle's (who has passed away) poems in Tamil, my Dad's 1998 travel log, etc.
Since I am the family archivist and others in the extended family don't keep such things organized well, people occasionally ask me for such stuff. Being able to easily pull-up and send an old photo or a document is personally satisfying while it could also be extremely useful/helpful to your family & friends. Sending out an audio clip of my paternal grad father's (who passed away in 1999) audio letter to me from 1993, brought tears to my extended family members since most of them didn't know any audio of him existed. Though it may not mean much for next gen kids, hate to lose them in a laptop crash!
I do have some old letters/photos/videos that I intend to slowly digitize and archive. Since my elderly relatives were passing away one by one, I did a series of 18 interviews with family elders, edited and kept them in YouTube as unlisted videos that I can share with my family members. Old photos, audios, video clips that I had were very helpful to illustrate the discussions with family elders, rather than just the two of us talking. Here is one such video of me talking to my Mom & Dad about their wedding that took place in 1964. I have added English subtitles to this video, since my non-Indian friends (who don't understand Tamil) were interested in watching it to learn about Indian weddings of the 1960's. You can see without the photos used in the video the interview wouldn't be that interesting.
One friend even said we don't want to store & cling to old material forever but should learn/create new material continuously. This is quite true when it comes to teaching classes, where you wouldn't want a teacher/professor using the same teaching material from decades ago. I do make a sincere effort to continuously refresh/update my lecture material. Still we may have a lot material that we'd like not to lose. Hence this backup discussion.
One friend asked about history of changes and being able to go back to older versions when you have messed up a file or when you need to see how things evolved over time. if so, consider the free software Syncthing for automatic backup from Windows/Mac machines as well as phones to keep files synchronized and also keep older versions (as does File History app that comes bundled with Windows with similar apps for other operating systems). If your system allows you to go back to previous versions of the same file, you don't need clumsily save copies of the same file manually with different dates, as I tend to do sometimes.
If you want to occasionally share a file (e.g. want to give a music MP3 file or a big PDF document to a guest visiting your home, quickly, just one time), you can setup Copyparty. This is neat since this doesn't require your guest installing any software on their computer/phone.
Now that I have written about this topic twice, it should keep me motivated & honest to take this task to the finish line this holiday season. Recently my BIL in Bangalore was reminiscing about how he had to throw away so much of papers/stuff that his aunt who passed away had accumulated over the decades, that included her degree certificate from 1973, and so on. It made us all realize how things that may be so dear to us, really won't mean much and will become useless after we pass away! So, while I am trying to preserve important material, I intend to keep up my inner Marie Kondo alive to avoid digital hoarding, even though the real MK herself seems to have given up a bit after having three kids! 
If you have young kiddos in your life, you may want to show them https://www.noradsanta.org/en/map?mod=livecoverage_web as it is that time of the year!
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