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Ask HN: How to back up GBs of data while traveling?

3 points| benoitberaud | 5 years ago

I'm looking at a solution for friends who will be traveling the world to let them back up their data (mainly photos, videos, so multiple GBs per month). They would love to ensure they do not lose them, for instance, due to bad luck or customs scrutiny. How would you do this? Does it still make sense to send SD cards by mail? Is there any service provider on this?

The main challenge is that they do not expect to have much internet connectivity during their travel.

3 comments

LinuxBender|5 years ago

SD cards by mail makes sense to me if they are traveling. And I doubt anyone would like the way I do things. I would copy the files to a laptop and let them transfer to my SFTP server in the background. This means I still have a local copy in case something goes wrong in the transfer or the SD card is damaged. Hopefully there is a safe place to lock up the laptop that still gives it some internet. Get a really cheap laptop as they are often stolen from travelers. There are SFTP clients for cell phones but they are all horrible in my opinion. Why SFTP? Trivial to set up a VM at Linode, DigitalOcean, Vultr, OVH, wherever and have storage in seconds. Also means some other company like Facebook isn't scanning / copying my files and claiming ownership of them or holding them hostage in some strange format.

mceachen|5 years ago

Most hotels will have slow but unlimited wifi. If you use something like resilio sync, syncthing, or photosync, you can transfer the day's photos and videos overnight while you're sleeping. Links here: https://photostructure.com/faq/how-do-i-safely-store-files/#...

Also: if they do decide to mail SD cards, have them only send backups, so if it's lost in the mail is not a tragedy. There are USB OTG dongles you can attach to an Android device to make SD to SD copies, using a file manager on the smartphone, so you don't have to lug around yet another computer.

theamk|5 years ago

If all you need to do is to worry about bad luck, you don't really need a service. They should buy multiple SD cards, and keep mailing it to themselves. As photos/videos can wait for a while, the envelopes don't even need to be opened until the friend returns from the trip.

As whether it makes to mail SD cards -- it entirely depends on the country. Some countries have great internet, so you can just upload the photos. Some countries have bad postal service, so the mail can get lost easily.

Either way, if going mail route, make sure to encrypt the cards, and send multiple ones, in case some get lost.