Steve Walker posted
On 14/07/2018 15:35, ss wrote:
Agree with you about faffing around with obsolete stuff, but the
*one* argument for having a backup drive not permanently connected is
that it saves you from nasty ransomeware that quietly scrambles all
your FATs.
I already have a 20GB external hard drive which I just update a few
times a year, mostly pictures and a few excel stuff. Purely a back up
should my PC fail, it is not permanently connected.

20GB? My backup drive is 3TB! The home server has 8TB in raid 6 - large
chunks are replaceable, but it'd take some time.

Nearly 14,000 photos taken over 18 years take 53.4GB.

I've not even looked at the size of the videos of our wedding,
honeymoon and the kids over the years.

Different people have different backup requirements. 20GB does seem
absurdly small these days (even I have a 500GB backup drive), but
perhaps he doesn't take many photos.

People here and on the parallel thread "OT _ Back up Advice - PC" also
talk about generational backups, incremental backups, protecting against
a hardware failure while doing the backup, etc. Not everybody needs to
be so sophisticated. An offline backup arrangement that will allow you
to recover most files after a primary disk crash or ransomware attack is
likely to be good enough for ninety per cent of non-business users. Most
people don't even have that in place IME.

--
Jack