So sayeth the late Pondini that there is "no such thing as paranoia when it comes to data redundancy"
He was a great guy.
The motto I created is:
C.A.R.D. (compartmentalized autonomous redundancy of data)
I coined this acronym about a decade ago for people to remember. Four words: "compartmentalized autonomous redundancy of data" or C.A.R.D. What this means regarding your data is “centralize it, isolate it, and multiply it”. This easy acronym to remember about how to approach your data is a great first approach to keep in mind.
Compartmentalized: separating out your data from your system files, centralizing all static and active files into a location or two to make backups, and archived data easier to update and locate. Centralizing your data collection is the primary hazard to overcome for what usually is the case of data that is scattered everywhere throughout your internal hard drive.
Autonomous: Isolation of data from changes, theft, decentralizing data to safes, fire boxes, offsite and online locations. Importantly ‘freezing’ data onto independent storage media for protection and from alterations, such as DVDs, hard drives, and online encrypted files, or .DMG created files of static data collections.
Redundancy: making copies of all autonomous isolated data such that data is decentralized not only in place and in media storage type (DVD, HD, online) for safety and protection as a failsafe, but each aspect of that failsafe has at the very least two redundant copies.
Data: all files made, saved, created, modified or working on. Important pictures, documents, videos, PDF, financial, personal. Any data large or small which you would not dare lose, which is private, important, hard or impossible to recreate, or most importantly, would take tremendous time to regenerate. Essentially anything important to you, your company, your loved ones (will, medical records, financial information, etc.), friends or otherwise.
