Don't Lose Your Data Like a Dummy 

If you care about your data, don't burn at maximum speed. Drives lean into the error-correcting codes to offset the lower recording accuracy at higher speeds. If you want to still have your data in 20 years, write at 2x. Also, store them in a cool, dry, dark place. Sunlight is really bad for optical media. Constant temperature changes can also cause de-lamination, so you really don't want to leave your stack of backups near a heat source. Computer tower, heater, black storage case that may get left by a window...

Back in 1999. My apt got broken in to. They grabbed my brand new 21” CRT, my gaming rig, my secondary gaming rig, my DVD player, my 32” TV. But here’s the thing. They took the time to EJECT my JAZ cartridge in my second PC and leave it on the table. The JAZ cartridge was labeled “My Files” Because of that, I still have some of my oldest most cherished data to this day.

At 12:25, it appears that Acronis gave Quinn 5 TB of included storage for his backups…but the $50 a year version includes no online storage. It also only backs up one computer. If you want 5 TB, Acronis is $285 a year. So…WTH?

Colleague: hey I have this HDD with my whole life's digital pictures on it. It's my backup but it broke down. Can you repair it? Me: sure man! Glad you have a backup so you haven't lost anything if this doesn't work. Colleague: But this is all I have!.... Me: but you said it was a backup! Colleague: Yeah I put all on that drive and stored it in a safe place! My backup! Me: Oh dear...

Now this is what I call a 20 minute ad I mean, the guy even brings up backup in cd disk like if it’s nothing xD

It's always difficult to give a broad information video when you've got a sponsor urging you to hit their talking points and make their product seem good but I feel you threaded the needle well. Didn't feel any different than any other snazzy labs video. Much better than that gimbal webcam video from last year.

BD-R is NOT a format you want to use for archiving I've learned this when working at an advertising agency where I was doing daily backups which I stored in a huge heavy fireproof safe. Guess what? 3 years later: read errors all over the place.

Oh man, I love your videos but having a video with the subject being directly related to the sponsor is.... eh.

Another thing is that if you lose a primary copy you want to create extra backups, not just switch to the backup as your primary. I lost 3-4 years of my personal programming projects waaay back in around 2007 or so. There were backups but they managed to all get destroyed due to a comedy of errors. Primary copy on the flash drive was lost when the drive got corrupted and truncated every file to 4K. I was able to get all the other parts via chkdsk files but realistically I wasn't going to be reassembling those files. Second copy of the data was lost while trying to fix the Flash Drive because I somehow managed to delete the wrong partition. And the final copy on another hard drive got lost when I accidentally injected CD Burner firmware into it instead of the CD Burner.

One big Problem with LTO Tapes is that the read/write heads can become dislodged meaning only the device that wrote the tape can read it and only if it is already dislodged too. Getting a second tape drove for checking is prohibitively expensive and just makes it even more unpractical for home use that it already is

I use only MDISC media because (allegedly) its longevity far exceeds media that uses either organic or inorganic dye. If you don't use MDISC discs, you should check out whether the media you are using has organic or inorganic dye and choose the one that won't fade in just a couple of years, making your backups useless and unreadable.... I use a simple USB 3.0 portable BluRay writer just like the one Quinn shows in the video, it's pretty quick and I keep the burned discs in one of those CD binders like you would have used with your home theatre DVD movies.

LTO Tape is really cheap for what you get in terms of capacity. But, wow, those tape drives are expensive…😱

Yes Grandfather, Father, Child three copies. Live in the Apple garden so use Time Machine to local HDD. Sync document files to another iMac SSD across the lan. Also backup document files to USB C which I keep in my car. Going to move to small ThunderBolt external solution at some point like the SABRENT Thunderbolt 3 Certified M.2 NVMe SSD Tool Free Solid Aluminum Enclosure (EC-T3NS) for multiple uses including backups. As a sysop for a small regional ISP (Internet Service Provider) when the public Internet first opened up part of our plan was backup, backup, backup. It was few and far between times that we ever had to restore something. Thing is when we went to restore it because of our plan we always have it. As some point I hope technology moves forward to the point that I could purchase a SSD NAS solution that could be enclosed in a fire proof enclosure. Love to be able to put that in the garage on the floor near the garage door. Time Machine also does version backups, and can be encrypted.

If you think a NAS could be useful for you, it can actually handle a couple of those points. I use a Synology NAS (The 4-bay version of what you showed) both to story my files in a sort of personal cloud that I can access anywhere as well as to backup my entire computers to (Time Machine Mac backup and the Synology Active Backup app on Windows PC). Backup number 1 done! And being a NAS with multiple drives, it also has that disk redundancy. I then have the NAS configured so that whenever I plug a specific USB hard drive into it, it automatically copies my most important data to it as a differential backup, so I always have another copy of the most vital data that I can share in a lock box until it’s needed.

“Nobody, nobody - wants to steal a disc!” IYKYK! 😂

Mannnn, I was so pumped because I've been looking into long term backups, but I'm not looking for an ad. I'd rather just have the different pros and cons laid out and left it at that.

Whoa, just come from Luke Miani's house and he's doing an Acronis sponsored video as well. The Acronis marketing dept must have just woken up! 😂 All joking aside, backup is a super important thing that's way too often overlooked so thanks for this video 👍🏼 I run daily, weekly and monthly backups to separate local NAS devices, I clone the boot drive every night plus to an external SSD and I do change based backups to the cloud (CrashPlan). You can call me paranoid! 😄

Acronis, just give me your old imagine software. No cloud, no security scanning BS. Just a good disk imaging tool. And let me buy a PERPETUAL license! Zero interest in a subscription or software as a service business model

You make a very fair point about no one wants to steal your stack of disks but basically anything else would be stolen

7:59 Those brilliant engineers at LG figured out how to make the cupholder useful for backing up data! Seriously, though, "Ain't nobody want your blu-ray" is why I don't like the single-write optical backup idea. Even the recycling centers don't want them because they don't have a plastic resin ID code. They're just plastic waste. It would be nice if you could simply drop them into a blue bin after scraping away some substrate and breaking the disc in half (a secure enough destruction for the average person, since it makes the disc unreadable to anyone without access to forensic level data recovery hardware).

Good advice. We back up our workstations windows and mac to our synology NAS and then it backups up to a local 12 tb usb hard drive and to backblaze cloud. Protected in all avenues.

One addendum to using SSDs, especially if the use-case is for archival storage: because flash memory is dependent on a stored electrical charge to retain information, they do need to be periodically powered on to retain data. This isn't as common an issue now as it was on earlier lower quality flash memory, but It's still enough of a concern that I would recommend anyone using an SSD as an archive drive to access the drive annually as a precaution. According to testing performed by IBM, Samsung, Micron, etc, most higher end MLC drives theoretically may be able to hold their charge for around 10 years but TLC and QLC drives cut that theoretical time drastically. This in no way means that flash is too unstable, there are many times that I've found an old flash drive that I've not touched in years only to find the files still perfectly intact, but the chance is still there and should be considered if long-term archival use with flash media is being considered. Mechanical HDD also run the risk of losing some of their magnetism over time which can lead to data corruption or loss but this may be upwards of 20 years for modern drives manufactured by reputable brands, especially if those drives are designed with archival in mind and designed for long term archival storage. Also, unlike flash where once the charge on a flash cell degrades that bit is gone forever, for HDDs its generally a gradual weakening of the magnetic field which means if the data is really crucial following magnetic degradation, it may be possible for some data recovery firms to recover that data by transplanting the platter to a machine that can read weaker magnetic fields.

For Acronis, if you encrypt your backup to be stored on an external media, are you required to be in a valid subscription when you need to decrypt the backup files after, say, 10 years?

One thing I really like about backing up to a BD-REs is the fact that you don't need to spend lots of money upfront, or lots of money if you run out of space. That's why I used to back up my data to DVDs back when I was a broke teenager.

PTSD from PhD results being sent already corrupted to three copies, one offsite Verify every copy people!

What do you use for Differential back ups? I want only something that looks and backs up only the changes to the your original backups. Takes less time as well.

100GB BD may be cheap in your area but here in europe it's at LEAST 20/each on amazon and i've never seen them that much cheaper anywhere in the world so would love to see those $1 100GB discs :) you're way way better off looking for a used tape drive on ebay LTO 6 can do 6 and 5 tapes at 20-40 each, drive it's about 300-500 so that's 35 EUR (in my area) for 2.2TB vs 22x 20 EUR for BD-R that just 2.2TB will already put you at 440 EUR it makes 0 sense as far as i'm concerned unless you're only backing up very very little data 100GB or so and you already have a BD drive. but at 22TB of data you'd be looking at 4400 EUR just for optical media plus all the space it takes and how not practical it is to split data in smaller chunks and makes recovery a lot harder and slower anything newer than LTO 5 also supports LTFS which basically can mount any tape with a drive letter and you can copy/paste stuff without any software just needs the LTFS binaries installed, you can use third party software to organise and manage if you prefer that but it's not required, LTO 6 also stops making sense at over 100TB where you'd be better off with LTO 9 (unless you already have an LTO 8 drive or can get one for very cheap). So BLURAY = absolutely NOT super cheap don't tell that to people do math instead per GB and your own research before making any decisions. Also one more thing BD-R is also WORM (Write Once Read Many) if you go for BD-RE you'd also have to account for that extra while tape you can get special WORM cartridges but it's obviously rewritable as standard.

I came to this video hoping to hear about an affordable consumer LTO solution, and am leaving a Bluray disk appreciator. I'm sold and I'm buying some now 😂

Subscription service for the software to back everything up 🤮🤮🤮

What a coincidence, my HDD just gave up on me few days ago. I feel dummy

Ahh, flashbacks of the old days burning CDs at 1x and if you looked at them funny or touched the mouse or keyboard it would fail

I back everything up to floppy discs. Nothing can ever go wrong with that.

Love this video. Need this… What brand blu-ray and and Blu- ray disks do you recommend, Also Nas with with online server capabilities if there is one?

Guess who deleted 7+ years (almost 300 GB) of data dating back to when they were eleven? (This was back in 2020)

What I would say about backups is that the best backup is one that actually exists, and while everyone is going to lecture about doing routine backups, it isn't going to happen. It needs to be automatic, which means a Timemachine backup to the NAS, and then the NAS backs up the TimeMachine dataset to your offsite provider. Or, if you have a home and office, or two homes, then have NASes in both places, and have them back up to each other.

For anyone with an old-school tower or more recent offering including quarter-height front expansion bays _and_ the dosh to spend on it, ICY Dock and similar brands offer 6-slot adapters for 2.5" media. So you'd install that, attach data cables to motherboard _or_ insert a 6-port SATA PCI card and hitch 'em together for building a NAS-like device in your desktop PC. Some virtualization setup later and you can keep your first backup _directly attached_ to your PC with a separate Linux distro to manage the backup for quick and easy migration to another PC in-future. Pair that with a UPS tn ensure the power isn't interrupted unexpectedly (as when it is, you can just power off gracefully) and at least your first backup like that should be bullet-proof Of course, _three copies; two backups; one off-site_ right? But off-site isn't in the scope of this writ.

I already have 2 pieces of "Margareths;" doing storage, containerization, and virtualization under Joyent SmartOS. I'm so buying an LTO; is the LTO software up to date for Mac?

For easy blueray off site storage, loan someone your blueray player

@Snazzy Labs Nice video! As stated numerous times, backups are important. But even more important is periodically testing those backups and restores, especially from tapes.

I remember in a job back in 1999, it was my first job maintaining a web app written vb6 and vbscript, they backed up the data in tape but it wasn't square like that, it was rectangular like half the size of a beta with a ratio closer to a VHS, I think it w was a 2TB tape. comparing the cost of tape vs M-Disc, cost per GB or TB, tape is a lot cheaper the problem is the tape recorder it will take a lot of tape to compensate the cost of the recorder vs the M-Disc. This is something that is really exclusive for a business and not for a hobbyist.

Impressive. Your file in 2:02 is from 3 years into the future!

I always keep a bootable copy of everything on three medias. I use a cloud storage for my data. I learned a hard lesson in 1978 when my team lost six months of development on our mainframe. I’ve not had any loss of data nor more than a little downtime due to hardware failure.

I wonder how the Acronis iOS app can backup without having to be opened. I have Synology Moments/Photos, and you have to open them for their photo uploads to work.

I'm backin' up, backin' up, backin' up, backin' up… Cause Quinn Nelson taught me good…

It is mentioned that cloud storage companies tend to severely throttle you when uploading gigs of stuff. I wonder of Acronis throttles you when doing a full backup? What is max throughput they will allow?

Hi Quinn, how is Acronis different from other backups like iCloud. I'm considering getting it since the data on my Mac is almost 400 GB. I just need to be able to trust it in terms of privacy. Please what are your thoughts. Thanks.

Tape drives can be bought pretty cheap these days, as long as you don't go for the newest version. Usually LTO-5 or even LTO-4 is is usually more than enough and you can get the drives for a couple hundred bucks and the tapes, as long as they are still available are sold for roughly €20,- for on LTO-4 tape that hold 1.6 TB compressed.

I've been putting off actually getting a good backup system in place, but I'm finally going to actually do it, thanks!

Alternatively, consider if you really need big backups. Do you really need to hold all that data? I did some cleansing and deleted most of the files.

Snazzy, you don't need Acronis, you Synology nas that you own offers all of what you were doing and most likely for less.

I remember when CD-RW was DA BOMB - _and_ prohibitively expensive. Come to think of it, I've probably heard the old modem sounds more often than I have actually burned a CD-RW...

This video inspired me to finally do a Time Machine backup, thanks.

This is actually perfect for me - I've wanted a backups service with bit-for-bit drive cloning, but OneDrive isn't designed for that, and services like BackBlaze don't allow you to backup system files. Obviously this whole video is an advert but I found it super useful.

I use SuperDuper to make a local disk image copy and iCloud for remote storage and a NAS, so, already have overkill. SuperDuper is not that expensive to buy a lifetime license. It runs fast and I can boot from the local drive if my SSD was corrupted. Not sure what Acronis would provide me differently. I guess the cyber portion, but I already have security software and would be concerned they would step on each other. So if you have a new system and don't have any of the components then I guess the Acronis solution is pretty cool. Am I missing something?

I refuse to use any sort of redundant raid config on my media server. The drives all are the same age, so if one wears out and dies, I wouldn't want to stress the other ones out trying to rebuild. Got enough HDD's lying around to keep a full copy of everything.

I have had pen drives that last longer than SSD and Spinning rust hard drives. The pen drives in question are only plugged in and used at the time of making incremental backups. similar to external hard drives.

Backblaze cloud backup is a good option!!!

9:30 but even thow they may last that long do you think we could read that format in the future? i still have a 3" floppy reader and a zip drive but no longer a laserdisk and 5" floppy reader. they took up too much space and i needed a win 85 pc that just died, so ya. up building your backups should also be in the plan so when you need to upgrade your backups you all ready have the plan.

Was playing this video in the background and not skipping the sponsored part and after 5minutes was like when is this going to end 😂

I do my local backups on portable SSD's and it's great. They're tiny, super fast and easy to hide somewhere in your home. I use Apple Time Machine which keeps full system backups, so in case my laptop dies or gets stolen, I can simply replace and restore it. Time Machine also gives reminders if you haven't backed up in a while which is great.

I was literally looking for backup options yesterday. I got a busted 1TB HDD with all my college photos / family photos. A new SSD and a lot of stuff on google drive. They're all filling FAST. I am almost done organising them and i got a folder that i want to never lose, and i think Bluray can be a GREAT option for it. Idk why i never thought about it. I am just wondering, how long can i keep them? I will prob never use the discs, i need them in case i lose the cloud storage ( which is very unlikely ) OR in case i don't have access to internet. I will also have a local backup on a HDD but i wanna know the life of blu ray discs. Also is it the same for movies? I wanna go into bluray movies because watching banding on Netflix absolutely triggers me.

Is Bluray really dependable? I'm asking because I used to backup to CDs and over years have read error for several disks. Not sure how much more reliable Bluray is compared to CDs

Oh wow this was well timed. I'm currently going through this right now

This is what we call an infomercial.

how long term stable and how scratch sensitive are blu ray backups?

okay for a casual PC user, would you prefer a redundant clone drive in the PC or external HDD?

How many copies does iCloud have off my photo library on some servers? Assuming I dont manually delete a photo < what’s wrong with having iCloue only + turn on download originals on one of my devices and thats it? I dont get it - chances of both being loss at the same time are zero, even a baby deleting photos cannot enter recently deleted photos section with face id now.

learned my lesson in 2001 to back up everything to disc, CD, DVD, Blu-ray, and ext USB drives. Not the cloud.

For things like a thesis or written project, Git is amazing. Has many advantages besides backups on all devices.

Backblaze is also great with external raid 1 drive

For the blueray disk option, sometimes just a collection of a few video files in a project will exceed 100 GB, and most of my folders are well above 100 GB, so how would I back up an entire hard drive without piecemealing it so much it would be impossible to reconstruct? Does it really have to be bit by bit? Or is there a program out there that could take a folder in a stack of CDs in intelligently divide the data?

With 25gb Blu-ray Discs it would only take me 350 discs to backup my photo library.

this video is so useful. I love it. thank you so much for this. also I almost never comment in videos but I am so grateful right now that I ended up doing it.

i laughed when you said no one will steal discs lol. but serious question: are the blu ray discs rewritable? example: there’s a new update to my thesis paper, can i just insert the same blu ray or is it one “update” per disc?

I've always been big on optical data backup, pretty much all my offsite is just optical. Was always easy to keep at my parents house or in my work locker. Discs would be encrypted so if lost or taken no issues, and the DVD's are dirt cheap. I moved to using blueray a couple of years ago and it great having the extra size, especially for all the larger media files we tend to create now adays or maybe a movie rip that I don't have the dvd for anymore. I would stay away from DL blueray and BDXL the pricing is ridiculous compared to standard blueray.

Great overview of 321 backups and for most people cloud storage is definitely the easiest option. Though I wish you would have discussed some of the other options available for of site backups like synology remote server snapshot replication or less expensive cloud, backup options like backblaze b2 which allows you to back up your Nas to the cloud.

You will NEVER get 30 TB in one tape! (Everything is ALREADY compressed!). Unless you have TWO Tape machines, having only one of your “primary” backup devices, is asking for trouble when that tape machine gets misaligned or breaks…

Where to put the discount code? I used the link and there is no discount for me on also no way to enter the code.

Since 2000 I have been really good about backups cause of work! Had to use them one time after the datacenter lost power for a hospital at 3 am in the morning...

I’ve been thinking of getting a NAS but I don’t know what to go for. How would this compare to getting a Synology NAS, True NAS/Unraid?

Great video! Having a reliable backup power source is crucial, especially during camping trips or family outings. The Segway Portable PowerStation Cube Series seems like a perfect solution. With its massive capacity, fast recharging, and waterproof technology, it's definitely worth considering for outdoor enthusiasts like us. Thanks for sharing this recommendation!

LTO-8 tape is AWESOME!!! It's already saved my butt a few times. Yes, the initial cost of the drives ARE expensive and the original cost of the tapes were about the same as a HDD, but the cost of the tapes have come down and on a $/GB basis, the more storage space you need, the cost/GB starts to go down (because the price of the tape drive is a fixed cost, and not a variable cost like HDDs). And then if you compress the data (the system that might be doing the backup might not be very great at doing the compression AND writing the compressed data to tape), so if you compress the data "manually", and then write the compressed result file to the tape, you can get pretty good compression ratios onto the tape, depending on the data that you are trying to backup. (Videos doesn't compress very well at all, but text files compress VERY well.)

The problem for me with using Discs is that I would be creating a lot of trash as the data is always changing. So, file 1, is now trash in a day or so. It would be replaced with file 2, and so forth. I think you get the idea. What is your suggestion with files that always change.

Time Machine, a Mac and large hard drive coupled with cloud storage and if you're really adventurous, a bootable drive from like Carbon Copy Cloner.

My NAS is rather simple (or complex depending how you look at it) since I'm on a tight budget. Thin client PC running Windows 11 (yes I'm aware alternatives exist) as a file server with a hard drive dock plugged into it. Originally, I had this attached to my router (w/ OpenWRT) but it was limited on what i can do with it. For example, I can't do a mirror copy of the hard drive to another hard drive automatically. I need to do this manually on one of my PCs. With the client pc running windows, i'm able to automate this process and it's been running great. I also use cloud backups, but only to backup very important files. However, these are stored inside an encrypted container using Veracrypt. This is still a manual process for me but it's no big deal since these files don't get changed as often. Everything else, I backup to two separate drives. One of which is attached to the thin client pc to run a nightly backup. I often tell people that backing up is not hard. Mine is complex for most because it involves a lot of configuration. All you need are a bunch of high capacity hard drives and just put your files there. A backup is better than no backup

I have a 50GB iCloud for my iPad and iPhone - which also gives me browser access to my stuff. I also have 1TB of OneDrive with my Microsoft 365 account. So I'm definitely covered for off-site as well as sharing a common space between my different devices.

I was just watching a video from Luke Miani that was also sponsored by Acronis. Seemed like it had a lot of potential until I got to the end. Then I was like “… that’s it? Did I just watch a long commercial?”

What’s the best way to backup iCloud Photos?

It looks like Acronis just came out and bought advertising to numerous TechTubers at once. Just like in the old days

I've unfortunately lost 8 4TB drives worth of data recently... I run a Plex server on TrueNAS (then Core, now Scale) and I've been rebuilding/recollecting stuff on some new 4TBs for it... As for backup I'm only using BackBlaze B2 of which integrates into TrueNAS Core/Scale. I'm running a tad behind with the cloud sync, but oh boy will it be a doozy once I set it to sync again. haha.

Not a word about Time Machine. You don't use it? How would you integrate it into a NAS/offsite backup system?

Meanwhile Linus was losing data like professional

Keep in mind your photos are probably already stored on your computer, phone, and the cloud. 3 copies

10:30 I haven't seen one of those portrait Apple displays since I was in high school in the 90s 😐

I remember using 8in floppy's or 8-Tracks (was not around for the 8-in floppy time's, just got to play with one ) lol and other cool tech. was-n't M-Disk started as a CD or DVD?

when a sponsored video doesn't talk about prices... max is 5TB and costs 285 € per year for 1 computer LOL

I guess I’m having redundancy for my redundancy… my iPhone and iPad backup are locally on my Mac, I do this weekly. The Mac does it’s Time Machine on my Synology Server. I have another Synology some kilometers off site and the main Synology does a weekly full backup on the offsite one and has versioning too. And the main Synology has a HDD connected for a backup of most important files, which are in iCloud too. My gaming PC has multiple drives which are a mirrored by itself. I never lost something permanently, I had once to get a corrupted file from Time Machine and once a full mac restore from Time Machine. I’m quite happy with my setup. HDD space is running out on Synology and needing bigger drives and doing a rebuild multiple times scares me a bit though…

I also use multiple hdds for storage. They are quite old but still work. They are not my only copies and they do not have critial info. Also a case for a 2.5hdd is like 10€ which is very cheap. I would recommend people who have a bunch of hdds from old laptops to use them as external drive storage.

I use Acronis Cloud for anything in the Windows world but not on my Mac. Time Machine and iCloud storage are much more suited for the Mac imho. For Windows I totally agree. Acronis has been my choice for a long time now for all servers and workstations. Most important of all, it has never let me down when I ( or my customers ) needed to recover things, be it a certain mail attachement, a complete system restore or a VMware export. But for the Mac, I dunno, Acronis won't let you pick a certain mail and recover it, only the Exchange Server module can do that...with an Exchange Postbox on a Win Srv, not on your Mac.

what brand is that lto's writer/reader ?