External hard drive protection

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psychnurse

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#214485 14-May-2017 13:02

Hi members, I have just purchased a seagate portable hard drive and plugged it into my Netgear router to use as a "Readyshare" access anywhere hard drive.

As this drive has a lifetime of photos backed up on it, how would I prevent the likes of of ransomware getting into my mac then moving across to the portable drive?

gehenna

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#1781908 14-May-2017 13:19

You can't, so your best bet is to keep a copy off-site such as in OneDrive or similar.

psychnurse

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#1781909 14-May-2017 13:20

Thanks.

richms

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#1781984 14-May-2017 16:42

As it is a backup, it shouldnt be online all the time, so you plug it in, back up to it, then unplug it and take it off site.

I am not a fan of router NAS solutions since they cant use bitlocker, which IMO is a must (or other encryption) when storing personal stuff off site somewhere.

Get 2 drives, and alternate them when you need to back up an additional batch of content. Safety deposit boxes are good but perhaps overkill, otherwise leave it at your work in a drawerer (critical its encrypted in that case) or else a friend I know just leaves USB sticks in his PO box as an easily accessible offsite backup. cheaper than a banks box.

Richard rich.ms

psychnurse

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#1781998 14-May-2017 17:00

richms:

As it is a backup, it shouldnt be online all the time, so you plug it in, back up to it, then unplug it and take it off site.

I am not a fan of router NAS solutions since they cant use bitlocker, which IMO is a must (or other encryption) when storing personal stuff off site somewhere.

Get 2 drives, and alternate them when you need to back up an additional batch of content. Safety deposit boxes are good but perhaps overkill, otherwise leave it at your work in a drawerer (critical its encrypted in that case) or else a friend I know just leaves USB sticks in his PO box as an easily accessible offsite backup. cheaper than a banks box.

Great info, cheers. Can you install bitlocker onto a drive that already has files on it?

richms

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#1782003 14-May-2017 17:04

psychnurse:

Great info, cheers. Can you install bitlocker onto a drive that already has files on it?

Yes. It will go thru and encrypt it.

Not available on some versions of windows (home I think lacks it to some degree)

I have all my drives I can bitlockered - it slows access slightly but I know I can return the drive with a bit more confidence that it will be safeish when it breaks, whereas unencrypted ones just sit on my table of dead/dying drives that I need to deal with some day.

Richard rich.ms

JimmyH

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#1782035 14-May-2017 17:48

And it shouldn't be the only copy of something you can't replace. It's not just ransomeware and hackers you have to worry about - drives die from time to time.

For my personal photos etc that I care about I keep at least three copies. One on my NAS (RAID5), one on an external hard drive (stored out of the house) and one on optical disks (stored offsite). Storage is cheap, as in cents per GB. Losing irreplaceable memories isn't, neither is professional data recovery from dead drives. I may shortly make a second optical set.

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#1796658 8-Jun-2017 14:19

If you want to backup photos why not try an online photo album like SmugMug? I signed up to this earlier in the year, it means I have easy access to look at photos and they are backed up offsite!