[gregsadetsky]

I typically work in situations where the entire data to be backed up (file storage, database) is on the order of 10-100Gb. The projects I’m working on don’t fit the high profile of a Colonial but I’d rather err on the side of safety.

Is there a service that could regularly fetch data from s3 or even connect to postgres, and regularly send a physical copy of the data by mail?

Does it make sense to offer airgapped backups as a service to smaller companies? Over mail?

[tomjen3]

Why not just buy a tape drive and a few tapes? They are offline and air gapped the moment they are out of the machine and, if you have a small company, they can be stored in the owners house.

That gives you quick retrieval of of-site backups.

The only reason I haven't done something like that for all my personal data is that tape machines are terribly expensive. Tape drives are pretty cheap.

[gregsadetsky]

Yeah, that definitely sounds reasonable.

I was hoping for something SaaS-like that would be automated (so that an external company would be responsible to not forget to do the backups) and no entry cost. As you say, tape drives are expensive.

I was starting to imagine how automable it would be to have machines that downloaded and encrypted data, and small robots popping 128/256Gb (up to 1Tb) SD cards in and out, and even dropping them in envelopes with labels automatically printed out. Then the envelopes would be dropped into a chute as the outgoing mail :)

One obvious issue is that an 128gb card is about $30, so sending one every day would be too expensive. And if you sent one once a week that would mean up to 6 days of lost data.

Then there’s the issue of having access to so much customer data — this imaginary backup company would itself become a potential liability if it was hacked.

Would small companies even be interested?

[tomjen3]

To clarify. a tape reader is about 5k, a tape is cheaper than a hard drive at the same storage capacity and can be stored for a long time without issue.

[galangalalgol]

If you use mail consider if your restore time will be less than your acceptable down time.

[hanselot]

This can be avoided by offering a same-day backup restoration engineer deployed on-site with your last X backups? In fact, this sounds like exactly the kind of thing my managers would want.