**The 3-2-1 rule states that you should keep three (or more) copies of your data on two different media and one in an offsite location.** ## Islands Strategy I'm making a folder called "Island", which has my backups in it. The island folder is split into two parts - one titled "Cold Storage" and other dated with the ISO 8601 month. > [!tldr] "Backup Island" Folder > A folder, replicated in multiple places, consisting of 2 subfolders: > - **Cold Storage** = merge file & don't overwrite pre-existing files > - **YYYY-MM** = create new snapshot containing current versions, retain old snapshots ```mermaid flowchart TD c(Content - in Google Drive) subgraph Island A(Snapshots) B(Cold Store) end c --new copy--> A c --merged--> B NAS Island --"copied to"--> NAS Island --"copied to"--> p[Portable HDD] p --"copied to"--> e[Old Computer] ``` → Google Drive is off-site → Old computer is air-gapped to the internet → Portable HDD is with birth certificates & stuff in the "in case of fire" box ### Cold Storage Cold storage is for files that don't change often. Things that, once they exist, they are pretty much "done". These are the **vast majority of files** by storage size. - `media` - what's in my Plex + some books & audiobooks - `documents` - copy of my "documents" folder, essentially all of which will never change (e.g. Scans of physical documents) ### YYYY-MM Snapshots These are folders that contain files that are rapidly changing. The kinds of things you would want to retain some history on, in case of latent accidental deletions in the working directories. For me that's my [blog](https://aarongilly.com), my [notes](https://gillespedia.com), my [[PDW]] data, and Obsidian-based journal. **** ## Source [5 Linux backup and restore tips from the trenches](https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/5-backup-tips) ## Related - [[Organize by Context]]