Crowdsourced Backups

[Madd]

Hey there.

In case you didn't notice, there was kind of a giant super crash.
The main problem was that backups are tricky. Even if I set up automatic backups on the server, it's harddrives could fail. Even if I had them automatically downloaded to my laptop, it's off most of the time, or not on the internet. Even if I had it downloaded onto a desktop computer, some change might make it stop working and I might not know for months until something is wrong. All of these have been problems in the past.

I've decided to take a new approach, which I think will make things much easier if there's another crash like this one.

The process is this:
Every hour, staggered backups of much of the site's data are constructed, compressed, and encrypted with the most secure algorithms available and only retrievable with my own biometric information. It is set to expire in five years, which is long before technology is projected to advance enough to crack the information. it is then moved to an area accessible to everybody. Here: backups/

Download them. Or don't, whichever you prefer. But if you do, do it often. That way, no matter what, there will always be a very recent backup that I can use. If both of the server's disks exploded in a fire tomorrow, I'd be able to post on twitter to find someone who had the latest backup and get the site up in just a few hours, and nobody would miss more than an hour of pets or twenty-four hours of posts.

We will still use all of the usual backup methods, but this will be a last resort in the event that they fail, which is unlikely but always seems to happen anyways.

[sammythethief]

I will try to remember to download that backup daily.
It sounds like a sound idea to me (though I know absolutely nothing of the inner workings of running a website of this magnitude).

Thanks for everything, Tristan.

[Soleil]

If I can remember, I'll try to do it once or twice a week. I can't say I will remember hopefully others will though

[Myrin]

Count me in!

I wonder if something like Backblaze would work too? They advertize unlimited backup space for a low monthly fee, but dunno if they'd do servers like MS.

[ShenziSixaxis]

Done.

However, I don't see a file to be downloaded in the /forums area. o-O

[morgainthe]

done

[Revan]

Stupid crappy slow internet... The files aren't downloading correctly for me. I hope it's okay if I just stick to saving all the tabs in my Keep directly onto my computer as internet files just so I know what I actually had in case another crash like this happens again.

[Jinzeiu]

I downloaded them about 2 hours ago.

[GrowlingCupcake]

Will save them when I can, most likely every few days.

[Nahla]

I try to download every 2 days.