Or how about the radical idea of not relying on someone else for your important files?
this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2025
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This! Invest in local storage as much as possible, ideally create your own proper storage server! Given how fragmented and volatile things are becoming, this isn't even just about access anymore, it's about archival as well.
How do you account for off site back ups though? I'm currently setting up my own set up but I'm not sure how I should perform off site back ups.
Got a friend or family member willing to let you drop a miniPC at their place?
You could also go the offline route - buy two identical external drive setups, plug one into your machine and make regular backups to it, drop the other one in a drawer in your office at work. Then once a month or so swap them to keep the off-site one fresh.
Also there’s really nothing wrong with cloud storage as long as you encrypt before uploading so they never have access to your data.
Personally I do both. The off-site offline drive is for full backups of everything because space is cheap, while cloud storage is use for more of a “delta” style backup, just the stuff the changes frequently, because of the price. If the worst were to happen, I’d use the offsite drive to get the bulk infrastructure back up and running, and then the latest cloud copy for any recently added/modified files.
But.... but, there is no such thing as local storage. There are just other people's clouds!
Some of us never used cloud storage. I never trusted it.
Yeah I would prefer to move my data from the cloud to my personal computer. With fully automated cloud-based end-to-end encrypted backups, of course. Even web apps have good access to local storage now. If I want to share my personal data with someone, I can send it to them.
I'm sure there are a few applications where something more complicated is required. Neither lemmy comments nor biometric data from a "smartwatch" are among them.
Sadly, if it is in the cloud, it can get hacked far more easily than on your local. But neither is really safe. And very few people can stomach what they would have to do to improve thier odds.
I don't know if it was overhyped or too expensive (or both) but Drobo seemed like a good consumer solution to this problem. The idea of being able to live swap drives and have it all handle redundancy, provisioning, recovery, and whatnot automatically is critical for making this a true "home appliance".
I think Drobo suffered from the problem of being slightly too technical for the technology dumb, and slightly too dumbed down for anybody who knows what Network Attached Storage is. Once you have the knowledge to know that you want network attached storage with redundant hardware, a generic RAID solution is within your ability level and there’s no point paying a giant premium for the Drobo branded version.
There's a corp solution called "CyberArk" that's intended for storing passwords and other secrets and providing an audit trail for every access, as well as access controls, etc. It's nothing like a solution for personal data storage, but those core concepts would be great.
- Your stored data is under access control.
- Configuration of access to this data (write, read, and access frequency) is controlled by you.
- Access grants to others are time limited (although, maximum time may be 10 years or more.)
- Every data access is configured to be logged by default.
- Access to important data can be configured to require real-time authorization by the owner.
- Full change history is logged by default and thereby all changes can be reversed.
- Only the owner can choose to delete change history.
- Only the owner can choose to delete logs.
The trick is getting Meta, Alphabet, X, banks, retailers, libraries and the rest to agree to use this API for storage of your data. The next (impossible) trick is enforcing their secure deletion of copies of your data in a timely fashion after they have accessed it.
I can't even decipher the summary. I'll just stick to my syncthing setup.
I can't say I'd understand what mysterious kind of data it might be that's stored in social media networks but is owned and used by myself. Really - I don't have any data I'd want to make use of stored in any social network, except banal stuff like my last few listens at Music Brainz. Usually you're uploading the sort of data you want to be published to social media. They're not created there, so why would I need a URL other than file:// with a local path attached to access it. I also seriously doubt that klicking "Save as..." really is some secret and complex ritual known only to immortals and the priest caste, nowadays. (I might be wrong here. I just do not have anything to do with mortals or godfood in my daily life.)