ray_williams•11d agoProlific Poster

Thought I was smart backing up to the cloud, then a solar flare took out my files

Last year I had everything on Google Drive and felt invincible. Then I read about the 1859 Carrington Event and realized a big solar storm could kill satellites for weeks. I lost access to a bunch of irreplaceable family photos when a smaller outage hit for 2 days. Now I keep a hard copy external drive in a fireproof safe in my basement. Anyone else keep offline backups just in case the grid goes down?

3 comments

3 Comments

karencampbell11d ago

Wait, you buried a hard drive in your basement?

the_terry11d ago

Wait till the next owners buy the house and find a hard drive nobody can open. They're gonna think it's buried treasure or evidence of something bad. That's how cold cases start, some random homeowner digging up a mystery in their own backyard.

jamief6711d agoMost Upvoted

Ngl that makes me think of a buddy of mine who found an old flip phone buried in his grandma's backyard garden. He was so certain it was some kind of spy gadget or something from the 90s. Turns out it was just her old phone she dropped while gardening like 15 years ago and never bothered to dig out. We spent like an hour trying to charge it at his place. It actually turned on somehow, and the only thing on it was a photo of her prize winning tomato plant. So not exactly a cold case unless you count the tomato.