Offsite backup... how sneaky is this? LOL

[James Steele]

Actually, I preface this with the fact that you can always back up to the cloud and it's more convenient, so this *brilliant* idea I thought I had isn't so brilliant.

But I have one of OWC Drive Docks that let's you access 2 raw drives at a time, and I'm soon to have a stack of 5 1TB drives (spinners) when I disassemble this old school RAID box a client gave me. So I started thinking about offsite backup and backing stuff up to a drive and having it in a different physical location (in case of fire, etc.). Thought about where I could stash it. Friends house? Parents (too far away)? Safe deposit box as my credit union nearby?

Then it hit me. I have a post office box very close to my house. Put the drive in an envelope, address it to myself, then put it IN my post office box and stash it there. It will just look like I''m not picking up my mail! LOL. Goofy idea I know, but perhaps cheaper than a safe deposit box.

[mikehalloran]

Hmmmm… I have a PO Box, too.

If any of the offsite backup schemes supported Time Machine, I would sign up but so far, I’ve not found one that does. It wouldn’t replace my in house backups but it would reduce the number.

[James Steele]

Hahaha... I'm about to strip down this old conventional RAID that contains five 1TB spinners. I thought "Heck... I'll back up some stuff to one of those, put it in a padded envelope addressed to myself, and then next time I check the mail, slip it in my PO Box." I doubt postal workers are going to even notice it. If I'm really worried about it, I'll mail an empty envelope to that post office box so it has the postage and cancellation marks on it, and then retrieve it from my box, slip the drive in it and put it back. A lot cheaper and I don't think my post office is in danger of burning down. Plus the box lobby is open till 10pm every day but Sunday.

[James Steele]

Don't know why I'm thinking drives. That's so old school. USB sticks have very large capacities these days. LOL

[FMiguelez]

Hi, James.
IMO, the whole point of having a 3rd redundant backup offsite is to have it FAR away from where ever you are.
Mine is entrusted to my best friend who lives quite far from me. I gave him an encrypted USB3 spinner with all my personal files, clones of my 3 main OSs and all the sounds/samples I have.

In case of an emergency he could mail it to me or I could make the trip to pick it up myself. Every 4 to 6 months we meet and I give him an up-to-date one and he returns the older one, which serves as yet another redundant backup. These are CCC clones, since I no longer trust TM (I've lost info and 2 backups with TM and it deleted previous backups without my authorization; I hate TM now, but still use it for one of the backups for diversity's sake).

As we approach 2025, we will most-likely experience trouble with our electrical grids all over the world due to solar flare storms as the sun goes through its 11-year cycle of changing magnetic poles (a huge solar storm missed us recently by just a few days).
Also, we're also constantly bombarded with cosmic alpha particles that occasionally "flip bits" in HDs if they hit them (relatively rare, but it does happen). When the alternative is to spend days restoring your system, or worse, losing your files for ever in a puff, it's a no brainer. Better to be extra-safe than sorry...

* I can't find the article where I originally read that alpha-particle issue, but this video explains it quite nicely: