Unpopular opinion: The 3-2-1 backup rule is making things worse for most people

I see so many folks here talking about keeping 3 copies of everything on 2 different media with 1 offsite... but nobody actually does it right. I've got a customer who had 4 external hard drives all sitting right next to each other on a shelf. That's not 3-2-1, that's 4 copies all in the same fire zone. Same thing happens with cloud backups - people upload to Google Drive and call it a day, but forget they need to test restoring files. I know because I lost a whole tax folder last year when my supposedly backed up drive failed and the cloud version was corrupted from day one. Anyone else find the 3-2-1 rule just gives people false confidence instead of real safety?

3 comments

3 Comments

brooke_jones1d ago

Is anyone actually factoring in how their backup plan handles ransomware? @the_viola mentioned wishful thinking and I think that's it exactly. People set up their 3-2-1 and then never think about malware that could encrypt their cloud drive or their external hard drive if it's plugged in the whole time. I had a buddy who kept his offsite backup at his parents house, but his parents' computer got hit with a virus that spread to the network drive he was using. So his "offsite" copy was gone just as fast as his main one. Nobody talks about making sure your backups are air gapped or read-only, that's the real weak spot nobody considers lol.

rodriguez.mia3d ago

Honestly, that's just a backup fantasy at that point.

the_viola3d ago

Right, it's like planning to buy a lottery ticket and calling it your retirement plan. You're basically banking on something that's more about wishful thinking than actual effort. Nobody is actually living on their "what if I won the lottery" budget, you know?