Protect your Data from hardware failure, Fire theft or the Police

[wildchief]

My advice on protecting your data:

When protecting my data I assume I am protecting from the following threats:

Nosey members of the household
Hardware failure or fire
Theft
Confiscation from the Police or Authorities.

Step1: Encrypt your sensitive data. This can be done cheaply with a product called DESLOCK if using Windows.

Step 2: Duplicate Your data Locally. This can be done by backing up your data to an internal and external hardrive. I use both. The external drive is useful as it may be hidden or relocated easily.

Step 3: Duplicate Your data Off-Site. Hire some web space and use a program such as synchback se to upload it easily and on a regular basis (weekly for example). For Linux / unix you can use cron to tar up your files and then ftp them off site.

[StupidScript]

The only thing I can think of that would protect your freedom if the police were coming for you is to melt your system with thermite. Otherwise ... they'll probably get your data.

The other suggestions are very nice, though!

I use Linux's "rsync" program running as a cronjob to incrementally back up my user files to a remote system every night:

rsync -avz /var/www/ rsync://user@123.123.123.123/wwwback/

for example. This is also a good indicator of whether any files have been changed, as only the changed/new files are included with each backup, and the results are sent via email. Note that this method is a "quick and dirty" backup in case something goes wrong during the day and I need to quickly get the sites back up by rsync'ing last night's backup back onto the live server. I also do a set of rolling incremental backups so if something was broken and got backed up, I would be able to roll back to the previous backup without any trouble.

[wildchief]

rsync that is a good idea. I will give that some thought. I guess I need my remote computer to be a 'real' computer rather than just some web or ftp space though.

As for the police I agree if they have their hands on it then they can most likely read the data encrypted or not therefore melting the harddrive is the only way to stop them.

I like to duplicate the data off site so they can't destroy any evidence you might be using to bring complaints against them and I like to safe guard against the nuisance if you lose your computer (and personal data contained) to them you aren't guaranteed to get it back at least not in the U.K.