Storing digital copies of personal docs
Discussion
Fun topic for a Friday night…
What’s the best way to securely save digital copies of personal documents e.g passport, marriage certificate, birth certificates etc… and make it accessible from anywhere? I don’t have a nas drive, but in case of fire / flood it would be destroyed (?) I do have a my cloud home (used for backs up non essentials, so not worried if it’s destroyed)… storing on gmail isn’t appealing for obvious reasons… and I can’t think of any other way of storing.
Any ideas??
What’s the best way to securely save digital copies of personal documents e.g passport, marriage certificate, birth certificates etc… and make it accessible from anywhere? I don’t have a nas drive, but in case of fire / flood it would be destroyed (?) I do have a my cloud home (used for backs up non essentials, so not worried if it’s destroyed)… storing on gmail isn’t appealing for obvious reasons… and I can’t think of any other way of storing.
Any ideas??
Edited by extraT on Friday 3rd January 20:59
Get a NAS to store your documents, videos and photos in your home, then set up regular immutable snapshots to guard against ransomware and user error. And then have it back itself up to a cloud location (something like Google Drive, iCloud, Amazon AWS, Backblaze, Synology C2). It needn't be terribly expensive but it WILL save your butt eventually. You could do it with a 2-bay NAS and mirrored disks, but personally I use RAID6 so that I have two redundant drives. Depends how important you feel your stuff is.
LunarOne said:
Get a NAS to store your documents, videos and photos in your home, then set up regular immutable snapshots to guard against ransomware and user error. And then have it back itself up to a cloud location (something like Google Drive, iCloud, Amazon AWS, Backblaze, Synology C2). It needn't be terribly expensive but it WILL save your butt eventually. You could do it with a 2-bay NAS and mirrored disks, but personally I use RAID6 so that I have two redundant drives. Depends how important you feel your stuff is.
Genuine question: why go through all that to back up on g drive etc.. why not just a password protected pdf in a password protected folder uploaded to g drive, iCloud etc…Scan all documents and save to OneDrive so they are then available on all your computers and phones.
Use your phone to photograph documents and sync to OneDrive is very convenient.
Share the major folders with your nearest and dearest so that if anything happens to you then the important docs are still available to them.
Having everything available with an on demand sync to my phone has been a lifesaver on multiple occasions.
Use your phone to photograph documents and sync to OneDrive is very convenient.
Share the major folders with your nearest and dearest so that if anything happens to you then the important docs are still available to them.
Having everything available with an on demand sync to my phone has been a lifesaver on multiple occasions.
I use the personal vault on one drive for anything needing more robust security, everything else is on the less secure one drive area, which still needs password access.
All auto backs up and free with windows 365.
I find using Dropbox useful too when sharing project work with others.
All auto backs up and free with windows 365.
I find using Dropbox useful too when sharing project work with others.
extraT said:
LunarOne said:
Get a NAS to store your documents, videos and photos in your home, then set up regular immutable snapshots to guard against ransomware and user error. And then have it back itself up to a cloud location (something like Google Drive, iCloud, Amazon AWS, Backblaze, Synology C2). It needn't be terribly expensive but it WILL save your butt eventually. You could do it with a 2-bay NAS and mirrored disks, but personally I use RAID6 so that I have two redundant drives. Depends how important you feel your stuff is.
Genuine question: why go through all that to back up on g drive etc.. why not just a password protected pdf in a password protected folder uploaded to g drive, iCloud etc…I actually do something more complicated than I described to guard against this. The primary copy of my data lives on my NAS rather than on my computers. My NAS is hidden away in my property in such a way that it would not be likely to be discovered during a burglary. They can take my computers but those don't have anything irreplaceable on them, and their drives are encrypted. I also back up my PCs (Linux, Mac and Windows) to my NAS so that they can be easily recovered in case of theft or hardware failure.
Then I back up my NAS internally from one RAID6 disk pool to another in a separate enclosure. And I also have hourly immutable snapshots on the primary shares to guard against ransomware or me doing something stupid like accidentally deleting or altering critical files. These snapsnots are kept for at least 30 days. In addition, I have my NAS back up the contents of my Google Drive, so that if Google does something stupid I always have a backup. And then I have the NAS back itself up to two separate cloud providers so that there are multiple copies of my data. If disaster should strike, I know I can always get my data back. I'm just an ordinary person, but my digital photos and videos of friends and family members who are no longer with us are irreplaceable. And when I decommission an old computer with legacy software, I create a virtual machine of that computer and its hard drive for posterity, so that I can always access old stuff even if the software won't run on modern OSes. I still have a running emulated version of my Amiga 4000 with full hard drive content from 1990, so I can even access the documents I created at university more than 30 years ago. I keep everything and make sure it can never be lost. I also have a UPS protecting my NAS as I don't fancy corrupting my data when the power fails, as it does a few times a year.
Am I paranoid? Perhaps. But my job involves building private cloud installations in the hundreds of petabytes for large organisations and governments around the world. I have to be extremely stringent in my data handling practices at work and I cannot bring myself to be lax with my personal data.
What I do might be considered overkill for the average Joe. But I'm an average Joe and I create a LOT of data - my last holiday alone (Japan) generated almost a terabyte of photos and video. I seem to create new personal data at a rate of 2-3TB a year. If I don't look after it, it could fall into the wrong hands or be lost forever. Not something I fancy. Storage is cheap and getting cheaper all the time. Why risk it?
LunarOne said:
Because any public cloud provider *could* get hacked or lose your data through negligence or bugs. Or bitrot. All you'll get out of them is "sorry we messed up". It's happened before. You're not in control. And if your primary copy on your computer was also lost at the same time (burglary, fire, flooding, hackers) then you lose all your data.
I actually do something more complicated than I described to guard against this. The primary copy of my data lives on my NAS rather than on my computers. My NAS is hidden away in my property in such a way that it would not be likely to be discovered during a burglary. They can take my computers but those don't have anything irreplaceable on them, and their drives are encrypted. I also back up my PCs (Linux, Mac and Windows) to my NAS so that they can be easily recovered in case of theft or hardware failure.
Then I back up my NAS internally from one RAID6 disk pool to another in a separate enclosure. And I also have hourly immutable snapshots on the primary shares to guard against ransomware or me doing something stupid like accidentally deleting or altering critical files. These snapsnots are kept for at least 30 days. In addition, I have my NAS back up the contents of my Google Drive, so that if Google does something stupid I always have a backup. And then I have the NAS back itself up to two separate cloud providers so that there are multiple copies of my data. If disaster should strike, I know I can always get my data back. I'm just an ordinary person, but my digital photos and videos of friends and family members who are no longer with us are irreplaceable. And when I decommission an old computer with legacy software, I create a virtual machine of that computer and its hard drive for posterity, so that I can always access old stuff even if the software won't run on modern OSes. I still have a running emulated version of my Amiga 4000 with full hard drive content from 1990, so I can even access the documents I created at university more than 30 years ago. I keep everything and make sure it can never be lost. I also have a UPS protecting my NAS as I don't fancy corrupting my data when the power fails, as it does a few times a year.
Am I paranoid? Perhaps. But my job involves building private cloud installations in the hundreds of petabytes for large organisations and governments around the world. I have to be extremely stringent in my data handling practices at work and I cannot bring myself to be lax with my personal data.
What I do might be considered overkill for the average Joe. But I'm an average Joe and I create a LOT of data - my last holiday alone (Japan) generated almost a terabyte of photos and video. I seem to create new personal data at a rate of 2-3TB a year. If I don't look after it, it could fall into the wrong hands or be lost forever. Not something I fancy. Storage is cheap and getting cheaper all the time. Why risk it?
You are still uploading to cloud servers and your NAS is still linked to the Internet, so you are still at risk from hacking and malware attacks.I actually do something more complicated than I described to guard against this. The primary copy of my data lives on my NAS rather than on my computers. My NAS is hidden away in my property in such a way that it would not be likely to be discovered during a burglary. They can take my computers but those don't have anything irreplaceable on them, and their drives are encrypted. I also back up my PCs (Linux, Mac and Windows) to my NAS so that they can be easily recovered in case of theft or hardware failure.
Then I back up my NAS internally from one RAID6 disk pool to another in a separate enclosure. And I also have hourly immutable snapshots on the primary shares to guard against ransomware or me doing something stupid like accidentally deleting or altering critical files. These snapsnots are kept for at least 30 days. In addition, I have my NAS back up the contents of my Google Drive, so that if Google does something stupid I always have a backup. And then I have the NAS back itself up to two separate cloud providers so that there are multiple copies of my data. If disaster should strike, I know I can always get my data back. I'm just an ordinary person, but my digital photos and videos of friends and family members who are no longer with us are irreplaceable. And when I decommission an old computer with legacy software, I create a virtual machine of that computer and its hard drive for posterity, so that I can always access old stuff even if the software won't run on modern OSes. I still have a running emulated version of my Amiga 4000 with full hard drive content from 1990, so I can even access the documents I created at university more than 30 years ago. I keep everything and make sure it can never be lost. I also have a UPS protecting my NAS as I don't fancy corrupting my data when the power fails, as it does a few times a year.
Am I paranoid? Perhaps. But my job involves building private cloud installations in the hundreds of petabytes for large organisations and governments around the world. I have to be extremely stringent in my data handling practices at work and I cannot bring myself to be lax with my personal data.
What I do might be considered overkill for the average Joe. But I'm an average Joe and I create a LOT of data - my last holiday alone (Japan) generated almost a terabyte of photos and video. I seem to create new personal data at a rate of 2-3TB a year. If I don't look after it, it could fall into the wrong hands or be lost forever. Not something I fancy. Storage is cheap and getting cheaper all the time. Why risk it?
Dropbox or Google Drive or iCloud or OneDrive.
Read something like this and ask yourself id you can really do better yourself.
https://assets.dropbox.com/www/en-us/business/solu...
If you're a normal person you can't.
Keep a local copy for added peace of mind.
Read something like this and ask yourself id you can really do better yourself.
https://assets.dropbox.com/www/en-us/business/solu...
If you're a normal person you can't.
Keep a local copy for added peace of mind.
Create drop box account.
Take copy of document, upload to drop box.
Done.
Unless you are very sensitive to data issues, then sure its not 100% secure but in reality its as secure as you can get for free and in reality there is not much someone can do with PDF scans. You can PW protect the PDF as well, although again not fully secure.
Another option is to use google docs. Similar levels of security and what not.
Take copy of document, upload to drop box.
Done.
Unless you are very sensitive to data issues, then sure its not 100% secure but in reality its as secure as you can get for free and in reality there is not much someone can do with PDF scans. You can PW protect the PDF as well, although again not fully secure.
Another option is to use google docs. Similar levels of security and what not.
I had this problem at work years ago with a requirement to keep documents for 7 years, took professional advice who said store everything on a A disk and you will be fine.
I am not a tech person at all, is there some reason why you cannot take a pic of images or save documents to two pen drives, hide one and ask a trusted person to put the other under their floor boards or some very secure place?
I am not a tech person at all, is there some reason why you cannot take a pic of images or save documents to two pen drives, hide one and ask a trusted person to put the other under their floor boards or some very secure place?
Edited by K87 on Saturday 4th January 17:26
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hstewie said:
hstewie said: Dropbox or Google Drive or iCloud or OneDrive.
Read something like this and ask yourself id you can really do better yourself.
https://assets.dropbox.com/www/en-us/business/solu...
If you're a normal person you can't.
Keep a local copy for added peace of mind.
I can't remember if it was suggested on here or not, but I've been using Tresorit for a few years and always found it good to use, iirc all data centres located in Switzerland...Read something like this and ask yourself id you can really do better yourself.
https://assets.dropbox.com/www/en-us/business/solu...
If you're a normal person you can't.
Keep a local copy for added peace of mind.
https://tresorit.com
bhstewie said:
hstewie said: Dropbox or Google Drive or iCloud or OneDrive.
Read something like this and ask yourself id you can really do better yourself.
https://assets.dropbox.com/www/en-us/business/solu...
If you're a normal person you can't.
Keep a local copy for added peace of mind.
If you are paranoid about security (like me) you could also use Cryptomator (open source, with paid app for Andriod/IOS) to create encrypted folders on your cloud drive (256bit AES encryption).Read something like this and ask yourself id you can really do better yourself.
https://assets.dropbox.com/www/en-us/business/solu...
If you're a normal person you can't.
Keep a local copy for added peace of mind.
See: https://cryptomator.org
Cryptoamtor.org said:
Most cloud providers encrypt data only during transmission or they keep the keys for decryption for themselves. These keys can be stolen, copied, or misused. Thanks to Cryptomator, only you have the key to your data in your hand.
Cryptomator allows you to access your files from all your devices. It's easy to use and integrates seamlessly between your data and the cloud.
Cryptomator allows you to access your files from all your devices. It's easy to use and integrates seamlessly between your data and the cloud.
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