My “HoBO” Backup Plan

My backup plan is a three part plan:

1. Home
2. Bank
3. Online

… hence the phrase “HoBO” Backup Plan.

Here’s what I mean by this.

1. Home – I keep a local incremental backup on an external drive at my desk. For my Mac, I use time machine.
2. Bank – Every few months I go to my safety deposit box at my local bank. I make a full backup of all of my files on an external drive, then return that drive to the bank.
3. Online – Anytime I’m online, my Mac is being backed up to Backblaze.

Explanation

So why do I keep my data in three places? What would happen if someone stole my laptop and somehow got into my online backup account, deleting all of my data? What would happen if my bank exploded and everything in the vault was ruined?

With my three part HoBO Backup Plan, if any one backup were destroyed, I’d be fine. If two were destroyed I’d be ok, but I would probably have some data loss. Not all of the data would be lost, but some of the most recent data could be missing. I’m most concerned about the oldest data I have, which is old photos and videos.

Cost

The initial cost is around $100 for the home drive, $100 for the bank drive, and $5 / month for Backblaze.

Every month my cost is $5. This doesn’t include the price of replacing a damaged drive, but I can’t know when that is going to happen so I didn’t incorporate that into my budget.

I will gladly pay $60 a year to make sure my data is always safe. I can sleep soundly.