I have about 500GB of data (photos, documents, videos etc.) that I have accumulated over the years. Currently, I keep them on my computer and rsync all additions / changes once a month or so to an external hard drive. Do I need to be worried about data loss (sectors going bad, bit rot, bit flip, whatever it is called)?
To clarify,
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None of this is commercially important; I just don’t want to get into a situation where I look up an old family photo or video twenty years down the line and it has got corrupted.
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Both my computer and the external HD are HDDs. They are fairly cheap here (and very cheap if second hand). Buying SSDs or dedicated hardware would be expensive.
Hard drives can fail. A strong magnetic field could scramble the data on the platters. HDD’s are pretty reliable usually though. Biggest concern with external HDDs would be fall damage.
I would say to check random files from time to time and you should be fine. Every 2 or 3 years, replace your backup drive. A backup program like Borg could help detect if you have a problem with your files, but you lose a bit of the simplicity of your current rsync method.
Anything your truly worried about should follow the 3,2,1 standard. Minimum 3 copies, on 2 separate media types, with 1 copy offsite. That said your current setup is already better than 95% of the general population and probably 70% of the Fedi.