bitflipper

abacab
I keep an archive of my installers on an external drive, just in case.  Probably should keep it locked up as well, as Bit's experience demonstrates ...

I am shopping for a safe, to be bolted to the concrete floor of my garage studio. Good ones are expensive, though. The ones I could afford can be broken into in minutes, as attested by the dozens of YouTube videos showing you how to do it.


In the meantime, my strategy is to never keep my backup drive in the same room as the computer except when actually performing backups. When I went to the Philippines in March I left it with someone so it wouldn't be in the house. My laptop, also being an alternate backup destination, is kept separate from both my primary workstation and my backup drive unless I'm there in the room with them.

I have an old well in the side yard that went dry years ago so I switched to city water. I was thinking of putting my installer backups in a weatherproof container and lowering it into the well. Then I came to my senses and realized it was a really bad idea.

bitflipper
Or, you could shrink-wrap the backups and put them in the toilet tank. Nobody's gonna look there, it's fireproof, and you'll be saving water with each flush.

Bit, you forgot the "but-with-my-luck" factor, which for many of us would mean the blue disinfectant in the toilet tank eats away the shrink-wrap and renders the backup media unreadable.

The idea is not so off the wall but would suggest a spin on the method.
Not in a well, but buried a foot or so down in the back yard, being careful to maintain some math reference with other temporal markers so you can find it again when needed.
Moisture the culprit and you don't want to dig up your backup to find it dead rusted. The approach does makes it a bit more difficult to do incremental backups, but at least you got the last image secured.
If you got a Seal-a-meal type thing, do at least 3 enclosures on the drive with heavy mil plastic.
If it is a smaller passport unit, put it after enclosures inside a big glass bottle with a good sealing ring. Adam's peanut butter in the big jar is a choice.
Tighten the bottle and do an extra sealed bag enclosure for the bottle. Wrap the bottle in bubble wrap and bury it. The bubble wrap there to buffer earth shifts that could stress and break the glass.
Will be there longer than you will as far as needed. Outside the radar of some poor jerk ripping you off. Poor jerk because the thief has to face the bad karma with interest of the harm caused. There is no escape from the Law.
 
John
 
 
 

Pessimistic Scenario #4:
You dig up the backup drive, find that it's still in pristine condition. But then you realize that in the intervening years Apple has gained 100% of the computer market and contemporary computers no longer come with USB ports.
 
If you doubt such a scenario could happen, I can show you shoeboxes full of floppy disks, 8mm tapes, VHS-C tapes and Iomega Zip disks that prove the point.

I say rent a backhoe, bury the whole lot and find a new hobby.