Store Data Permanently using 3–2–1 Backup Strategy
Hello friends, Anbuselvan Rocky here, Recently I was looking for a storage device to store my personal & professional data for a long-term archive. Just like everyone’s data, mine is also worth gems. (Not to you, but to me. 😅). So I decided to save my data more efficiently and more importantly, it should be future-proof.
When I was looking for a solution, I heard about the terminology called “3–2–1 Backup Rule” or “3–2–1 Backup Strategy”. When I researched more about that, got some clarity regarding “How one should store data for long-term data retention”.
So why do you need a data backup strategy?
It is pretty much simple. Data is important for you right? If that is so, following the data backup strategy will ensure that your data protection measures are effective, reliable, and will work like they’re supposed to when needed.
So it is always advisable to follow the data-backup strategy as far as needed.
So What exactly is 3–2–1 Backup
Just think like, you have important data stored on your HDD/SSD and after a few months, it got corrupted and all your precious data will get lost. Pretty bad right? 3–2–1 Backup strategy solves it.
The 3–2–1 backup strategy is all about protecting your data from total system failure. It’s a low-cost, simple solution that requires three distinct copies of your data:
- 1 (production) — The original data that you use for real-world purposes.
- 2 (backups) — These are used as backups.
Each copy of the data — the production copy and the two backups — should be stored and configured in such a way that it will remain intact even if the other copies fail or disappear. (Use any software which will sync automatically for you.)
Finally, each of these copies should contain the same version of the data. In other words, you don’t satisfy this rule if you have one copy of data from a backup that you performed yesterday and two other copies that were created last week. All copies need to contain the same data from the same point in time. (Creating data backups from multiple points in time is often a good idea, but it’s not part of the 3–2–1 backup rule.)
“Try to avoid connecting backup devices with the internet, If you are affected with ransomware viruses or malware, your entire data is gone!”
The 3–2–1 backup strategy provides protection against most IT risks including natural disasters, power outages, viruses or malware, and data corruption or loss happened.
Is the 3–2–1 Backup Strategy Ransomware-Proof??
Sadly, No backup strategy is 100% ransomware-proof. There are many ways to get around the 3–2–1 backup strategy, which is why experts recommend using additional ransomware protection such as air-gapping and immutability.
What about the cloud-storage?
If possible and if you can afford it, try saving all your data in the cloud. pretty much every cloud provider will be having the data-cluster services running. So there might be fewer chances of getting data lost.
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