It is impossible to fully eliminate the risk but with a decent backup system in place it is somewhat unlikely to lose all of your data.

The 321rule should be used as a baseline. Your local backup should be snapshotted and somewhat hardened against ransomware (pull backups instead of pushing them, do not mount the backup volume to other machines). Cold backups also help.

Can I construct scenarios in which I lose all my stuff? Sure. But in those, we are either in deep shit anyway (CME, some big astroid) or it is pretty unlikely (targeted hacking)

Aren’t you scared about loosing your data?

No. I still have files from 1991. I’ve got files that have migrated from floppy disk to hard drive to QIC-80 tape to PD (Phase Change) optical disk to CD-RW to DVD+RW and now back to hard drives.

What if I get a ransomwarei don’t realize and all my backups get encrypted too?

Then you need to detect the ransomware before you backup. I use rsync --dry-run and look at what WOULD change before I run it for real. If I see thousands of files change that I did not expect then I would not run the backup and investigate what changed before running the rsync command for real.

Or if the backups are corrupted

I have 3 copies of my data. Local file server, local backup, remote file server.

I also run rsnapshot on /home every hour to another drive in the machine. I also run snapraid sync to dual parity drives in the system once a day.

I generate and compare stored file checksums twice a year across all 3 copies to detect any corruption. Over 300TB I have about 1 failed checksum every 2 years.

and my disks breaks?

If one of my disks breaks I buy a new one and restore from backups.

But also I’m afraid about cloud

I don’t use any cloud services because I don’t trust them.

You SHOULD be scare of losing your data. In fact it’s a very likely outcome if you’re storing data and you don’t know what you’re doing. This is true of every electronic storage format. If you’re not ready to lose everything, you have periodically practice recovery from backup.

Over the years, i’ve met tons of novice computer users who tell me “I’m worried my files will get hacked if I store them on dropbox / cloud”. I always set them straight: the number one risk for you is losing your own data, not data theft, unless somehow your files contain industrial secrets worth hundreds of millions of USD.

I consider myself an experienced computer user and developer, having had various roles that border on sysadmin. I don’t trust myself to run my DIY NAS. For the stuff that matters, you should fear complexity as it 's a source of errors. You should doubt yourself at every step. Practice recovery. This is true for everything. I messed up my pfSense router config this weekend, it wouldn’t boot. I took the opportunity to practice recovering from backed up config (I should have done that much earlier).

The key is to do regular backups to a different location, and to keep previous versions as read-only backups for a certain timespan. If something happens to the local data you can just restore from the remote backup, and also pick an unmodified previous version in case of a ransomware attack.

E.g. I do a daily encrypted cloud backup of everything that can’t just be downloaded again, and the backup provider keeps previous versions for 30 days.

Have multiple copies of the data. Use snapshots, they don’t get encrypted by a ransomware because they are read only and can’t be accessed via samba or nfs. It’s only a problem when the attacker gets root access to your NAS. Use a cloud provider like backblaze and backup your data encrypted. If you are really scared that ransomeware data will overwrite your backups use 3-2-1 and Grandfather-father-son backup strategy. But all this comes at a cost.

I loose my data all over the place.

I loose it here, I loose it there, I loose it all over your mother’s hair.

As far as losing data, I trust myself and my adherence to 3-2-1 more than I trust a third party solution.

Only thing dear to me is my family photos and videos over the years. They’re backed up to two different cloud providers. Everything else is ultimately downloadable.

Immutability! For some reason nobody here mentioned this! There’s only one thing which can protect you against ransomware - backup storage with immutability! It can be S3, custom script setting immutable flag, read-only snapshots and so on…

But… You need to make sure, that your backup storage is properly tightened, so even you, as the owner, cannot change immutable data without physical access to the server.

For now my server doesn’t have very important data most of it are your “Linux isos” I can just download again and I’m thinking of starting to move my file and photos to the server but in afraid. What if I get a ransomwarei don’t realize and all my backups get encrypted too? Or if the backups are corrupted and my disks breaks? But also I’m afraid about cloud because I’ve seen some posts about people getting their google accounts closed without notice for breaking TOS (maybe they did something wrong maybe not).

What you’re describing sounds like general anxiety. So if you’re asking whether I’m suffering from anxiety, then no :P There are risks in life and precautions you can take against them. I’m just as “scared” about losing data as I am about getting run over by a car, that is to say not at all. Both scenarios are horrible, both can be reduced in risk by employing reasonable countermeasures and behaviors. Beyond that it’s out of my control so there’s no point in worrying.

The only hazy variable in this kind of contemplation is: Am I knowledgeable enough to properly gauge the risks and know the “reasonable countermeasures”? And if you’re asking “Do you know enough?” or “Do you spend enough time learning new things?” then my answer would always be an emphatic “No!” because there’s no such thing as enough knowledge and competence.

No. I self host 100%. So, I have two separate storage stacks (truenas) that are always in replication.

A) Make backups B) take them offline.

Paranoia is the reason I self host. Clouds can kick you out or lose your data at any time.

Follow the 3-2-1 principle and there is less reasons being scared of loosing data.

Not as many years ago as I would prefer given my professional experience, I was running a lot from home. Most of it for myself to learn more (so nothing my home itself was dependent on) but a percentage of it was for storage of pictures, home videos, digitalized documents, emails, etc.

I ran my own exchange server for years (utilizing my own TLD that I bought in 2008).

I was in the process of migrating data from a couple of older hosts to the newer ones I had setup in the garage; basically from two cobbled together Dell T series poweredge servers in my hall closet to a small stack of R series poweredge in a 42u cabinet rack in the garage.

My whole stack was setup across the two hosts including backups from veeam from one to the other and copies.ofnthe backups stored on an external. Due to the size of the backups and where I was on my life financially, anything hosted up in cloud space was just a little out of my budget. Anything I could afford was suspicious at the time.

This too long story ends basically by me not paying attention to what I was doing and ended up destroying the raid on both of the original hosts without having finished moving all my data.

I lost years of emails from my exchange server, all the pictures and home made videos of my daughters life from birth to that point in time, and my backup data.

All from my own mistake(s).

I did everything I was “supposed” to do to keep stuff protected until I messed it up.

My daughter passed away this year in February at 16 years old. I’d give anything to have those pictures and videos back.

My point is, you can plan and execute and throw money at it if you’re able. And you’ll likely be fortunate enough to never really lose anything that’s valuable to you. But even planning and implementing, you can still lose stuff just by oversight and human error.

That’s the game, man. 🤷

321 rule - anything super critical also gets off-sited to the cloud.