File Back Up System for long term storage

fitznj wrote:
I have external drives and make FULL system backups at least twice per year.
I create a separate directory for each year and perform copies to that directory - I never overwrite files.

Been doing this since 2001, so theoretically I have more than 14 copies of everything since 2001. Multi TB drives are cheap. QWorks for me and is easy to manage.

Never liked off-site storage; don't feel comfortable about other people taking charge of my data; I used to work for a large Telco who used an off-site vendor for all their data storage (think billions of call detail records); The off-site vendors storage facility burned down and THEY had no off-site storage facilities !!!!! - we spent weeks restoring data from our own tape backups which we kept as a precaution.

From then on - I"M in charge of preserving/restoring MY data

But what is your plan if your house burns down? Do you keep an extra hard drive in a safe deposit box or something like that?

I was also thinking about keeping a copy of my back up disks at my office in one of my drawers...would be easy to do and not take up much space. I could keep only my latest back ups there. This would give me even more redundancy.

I just don't want to lose the family data...it was a close call this time but next time I may not be so lucky.

Thanks!

Jeremiah