affordable Immutable Backups for pcs

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What are good ones? If I use and external hard drive, how do I erase it when I discard it if it has an immutable backup on it??

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I give the drives to my grandson and he scratches the patters, breaks with a hammer and/or cuts them up with a cutting torch. Pieces are thrown out over 3 or 4 garbage runs so they are in different landfills or at least sections of landfill. And that is after I wipe them with dban or similar.

Overkill? Yes. But I’d rather my data stolen than my clients’.

Never Say Never

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My dad beats up mine with a hammer and we keep the magnets.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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wavy

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What do you mean “immutable”?

I use / recommend any of the free / paid 3rd party apps to create the backup to an external drive. A search here will find software recommendations.

To delete data on a drive you need to write random data to every sector once. There in no need to do it more than once on modern hard disks because the data is packed so densely that there is no method that can recover the old data.

To securely erase an SSD you need to use the manufacturer’s utility.

Use nwipe/ShredOS to perform the data write.

cheers, Paul

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Immutable backups are the latest thing  to counter ransomware for companies.

They are write only backups that cannot be changed, updated, altered or erased. That protects them from ransomware encryption.

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Macrium reflect paid version that has anti ransomware protection

And a hammer to beat up the old hard drive.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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THANKS! Looks good. I’m surprised you haven’t done an article on immutable backups.

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The Macrium backup isn’t really immutable, it uses a different user account to write the data and other users do not have access to the data. Malware that can take over your PC  as an administrator has the ability to change the permissions on any files.

A truly immutable system requires backup to an external system (NAS) with regular snapshots. The snapshots allow you to recover to a point in time, prior to infection.
There are plenty of these systems for home / SOHO use at less than $500 – see QNAP, Synology etc.

cheers, Paul

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More options:

6 Best Hard Drive Eraser Tools For PC: Best Disk Wipe Software In 2022

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For Windows users, you  already have access to Diskpart clean all as a part of your Windows system.

Regards, Phil

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Look into Archival Grade DVD’s.

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Just another Forum Poster

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RetiredGeek wrote:

Look into Archival Grade DVD’s.

Those are referred to as M-Disc (because they’re suppose to last 1,000 yrs) and, while any DVD/Blu-ray drive can read them, it requires a special drive to write to them because the laser has to be much more powerful than what standard drives come with.

If your drive has the M-Disc logo like my LG drive, it’ll write them.

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hhhenry1 wrote:

If I use and external hard drive, how do I erase it when I discard it if it has an immutable backup on it?

Disassemble the drive and pass a strong permanent magnet over both sides of the platter(s).  This will degauss the platters, wiping out any and all magnetic information, including the low-level formatting of the drive, making it just a shiny steel disk.  Not only will there be no data on any sectors, there won’t be any sectors.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We were all once "Average Users". We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems, we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

Computer Specs

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It’s important to note that while immutable backups can provide an added layer of protection against data loss, they should not be considered a replacement for other data protection measures like antivirus software, firewalls, and regular data backups. It’s always a good idea to have multiple layers of protection in place to ensure the safety and security of your data.

Now days with Ransomware on the rise. Microsoft Azure Blob implemented immutability as well. Immutability has also become a main driven strategy that should be implemented for DR to counter ransomware. It either uses storage that supports immutability or a product that preserves point-in-time restoration.

Products like Veeam and Gs RichCopy360 have built immutability support for Azure, wasabi, Backblaze, and AWS S3.

While it is a good option to turn them on, the retention period for those should be studied well as they can increase costs quickly.

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What Is an Immutable Backup?

Simply put, immutable backups are backup files that cannot be changed or deleted for any reason whatsoever.

Source:
https://www.nakivo.com/blog/immutable-backups-explained/

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geekdom wrote:

Simply put, immutable backups are backup files that cannot be changed or deleted for any reason whatsoever.

“Air-gapping allows for immutable backups if the devices are stored in a safe location as the data written to them cannot be tampered with. For example, you can store backups on tape, NAS, optical disks, or SSD. If your production site is down or was hit by a ransomware attack, air-gapped backups are not affected.”

That’s what I do, in duplicate.  I also run complete drive images (the entire disk) from time to time on all drives, and those are also in duplicate.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We were all once "Average Users". We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems, we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

Computer Specs

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geekdom

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“What Is an Air-Gapped Computer?

An air-gapped computer system has no physical (or wireless) connection to unsecured systems and networks.”

Direct Quote from Source:
https://www.howtogeek.com/687792/the-ultimate-defense-what-is-an-air-gapped-computer/

On permanent hiatus {with backup and coffee}
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offline▸ Acer TravelMate P215-52 RAM8GB Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1265 x64 i5-10210U SSD Firefox106.0 MicrosoftDefender
online▸ Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1992 x64 i5-9400 RAM16GB HDD Firefox116.0b3 MicrosoftDefender

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