I’m thinking about quick evacuation of the house, for example, in case of fire. I intend to put all most important paper documents into one bag that I could simply grab it as I leave. Also, keeping all docs together is a convenient way to find them.
However, it is more difficult to organise myself with IT: yes, I can grab my work bag with work laptop, but I also want to create a home storage (at least 2 TB) accessible from internet. How can I create it that it be safe (backs up files in case one of HD packs up and be shockproof), portable, convenient and inexpensive?
I thought having external HD that I could immediately place into a bag and back it up from time to time from the main storage, but I think it is too much hassle and I will stop backing files up regularly. Taking the storage with myself – I don’t think it will be easy detaching all cables in emergency and the box itself might be quite bulky. Backing up into the cloud is too expensive, so I keep only important documents in the cloud.
What is the optimal option in your opinion?
Thanks

I'm not the IT guy in the family, my hubby is, but here's what we do. I keep hard copies of all important docs, along with a flash drive of scans, in a fire box in my desk. He keeps a back-up of everything (including scans of all docs) on an external hard drive. The plan is to grab both in the event of an emergency. There's also a flash drive of scans in our famly BOB.

I use an Apple iMac which has a programme called Timemachine built in. This automatically backs up to an external 2Tb disk every hour. Totally transparent and does not interfere at all with any use of the computer.

I am sure there will be similar software for other operating systems.

I back up to the cloud. It costs $60/yr and gives me remote access to my backed-up files. Portable hard drives are a great solution if you are diligent about keeping it up to date.

I pay $20 annually for 80 gigs of cloud storage. My favorite photos are already there and a lot of family photos going back 100 hundred years are now scanned and in the cloud.

Cloud storage is getting cheaper all the time.

Ditto Ian on the Apple Time Machine - my external hard drives are diminutive and I keep them in a briefcase when not hooked to my laptop.

A trusted family member at another location could also be a wise backup plan. Put everything digital you value on an external hard drive and ask them to keep it tucked away somewhere. You could probably password protect it.

An external drive need not be difficult to remove. For example,these units allow you to simply pull the drive out:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007XJIYRC

Likewise, you shouldn't set something up that requires you to manually back up your data. There are a zillion automated backup programs out there.

I've used this one for a long time. There are lots of other options out there tho:

http://www.novastor.com/en/software/windows-backup

That said it is not optimal to rely on a scheme that requires you to grab the drive in case of an emergency. It is possible you won't have time, or you might forget, or you might not even be home (think fire).

Using a local drive can work for this (rotating a drive somewhere off-site like a relative or friends house, or safety deposit box), but you have to be able to remember and make time to do it.

The cloud based solutions are a good way to get both an automated solution combined with a off-site solution. The thing I would be careful about is security. You want to get a solution that is encrypted because, remember, those files are hanging out on the Internet. Make sure you use a really strong password.

Depending on how much stuff you have will really drive the cost. You might consider backup up your most critical files automatically to the cloud, and all your files to a removable disk.

Also remember that a possible situation is that someone could steal your computer and/or your backup hard drive. Optimally you would want to encrypt your sensitive files, both on the normal hard drive, *and* on the backup media.

Truecrypt is a good free encryption solution, but has some limitations interacting with Windows (backing up in-use files in particular).

http://www.truecrypt.org/

There are some (commercial) Windows only solutions that don't have this issue because they are willing to pay license fees and sign NDAs that the Truecrypt people are not.

Windows also has encryption capabilities with their higher levels of Windows 7. If you have a lower version, I think they will allow you to electronically upgrade to the other versions at a cost.

Depending on what you have available to you and your capabilities, you could also roll your own. For example, if you have a web site, you could potentially back up to your web server.

Some folks have combined the use of Truecrypt with Dropbox for example.

Some useful DIY components:

Webdrive (mount a remote web based entity as a "drive"):
http://www.webdrive.com/products/webdrive/index.html

Dropbox (mount a cloud drive on your computer with some free space):
https://www.dropbox.com/

Truecrypt (serious encryption, free, open source, multi platform)
http://www.truecrypt.org/

Cygwin (provide linux utilities on windows)
http://www.cygwin.com/
This can be useful because it includes the "rsync" utility which can be employed as a backup tool.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync

Good luck,

-john

I use Windows with Skydrive backup, same concept as Time Machine. Great for gigabytes, but as you've found all these solutions aren't tailored to terabytes yet.

If you're looking for a grab and go solution for 2 TB of data I'd recommend running a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device with ejectable drives, those scale up to 3-8 TB right now. I have one of those running now for video and archival purposes, 3 TB capacity (actually about 2.2 TB I think) in a RAID configuration: if I had 5 minutes to 1 hour to evacuate my home I could eject the drives and conceivably carry the data with me, if I wanted it. Frankly its not in my plans, like others I have my vital stuff in the cloud and am happy to kiss goodbye the copies of TV and film which make up most of the terabytes I have. Its just stuff, and I'm pretty sure I could find copies of Duck Dynasty if my NAS device were to disappear.

EDIT: Some other posters have touched on data security, I use Win7 with Bitlocker drive encryption on my work devices (desktops, laptop, Windows Phone) admin'd by my employer and run my own Bitlocker on personal PCs - why let the scum that steals your PC have access to all your data. Encrypting your cloud backup can work, mebbe - for me a better solution is to scan and put my most important docs on redundant thumb drives and put them in my safe deposit box. Twox4 GB thumb drives cost about $40 for what I consider to be the more reliable types (Lexar, Kingston), and my important docs don't change often.

Since I am "remote computer support" for my parents and several others, I am allowed some of their disk space to store my important stuff. Most of these folks I support are elderly, and have tons and tons of unused disk space that they will never have any use for. So I have remote copies of my stuff (encrypted, of course) on their computers in different states. Just like "cloud storage", but it's free. This is easy since I use Linux and the people I support do also. It may not be as trivial to accomplish using Windows, or might require some programming effort. Cloud storage is easier for non-programmer types, but you end up paying for it. And I would worry about the cloud company you're paying going out of business at just the wrong time...

Oh, also, consider keeping the most critical information like account numbers, account username/passwords with you, encrypted at all times.

I use a package called eWallet.
http://www.iliumsoft.com/ewallet

There is a Windows client, as well as an Apple IOS and Android client.

The Windows client keeps a copy of the data encrypted on your PC. The mobile clients keep it encrypted on your phone/tablet.

But the best part is they can sync wirelessly. This way you can use the Windows client when you are on your PC or the mobile client when you are away but keep them in sync easily.

Note, eWallet can now also sync to the cloud, but I choose not to do that since it provides an extra security risk that I don't feel is necessary for this type of information and doesn't really provide me with any significant benefit.

-john

As Haertig noted, Linux is a different story. I assumed you meant Windows, but each OS is a bit different.

Linux is really nice in several ways:

1) Your personal data stays in your home directory. Windows spreads stuff around making it necessary to back up a lot of locations where with Linux typically you just back up your home directory.

2) Recent versions of Linux allow automatic encryption of your home directory which fits very well with #1. I like Xubuntu using the "alternate" installer which gives you the options to select the home directory encryption at install time.

http://xubuntu.org/getxubuntu/

3) Utilities like "rsync" and "sshfs" built in.

4) Plays well with Truecrypt.

-john