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I've had following situation:

Data & Backups: I had a computer (with Windows 10) with data (some files "static" like photos, others with more like "work in progress" things that would change over time as I worked on them) on a hard disk drive (the ones with the spinning magnetic disks).

There was a live backup software running to an external hard drive (permanently attached), which allowed to view some previous versions of the file.

Furthermore there was also a "manual" backup - that is, with a backup software, but manually started - every few months to an external hard drive (usually stored off site) and and a server.

Problem: At some point I realized some files were shown as 0kB in the file explorer.

After consulting the various backups, it became clear that some have been 0kB as far back as the backups go, the backups that still contained the original files must have been overwritten at that point. (So more than 8-12 months back.)

It turned out that the hard disk in that computer failed. (Most files were still ok though, which is why I noticed only so late.) It did turn out that accessing some of these 0KB files would just freeze the OS, which is when I noticed that the problem must be a failing hard drive.

Question: How can I prevent this from happening in the future? Is there some way to continuously check or get alerted when files get corrupted or a harddisk starts to fail?

Since the some files change it would be impractical to compare e.g. hashes when doing backups, as you'd have to remember which files you worked on and which you did not. I just thought I had a solid backup plan, but evidently it didn't protect me against this problem of a hard drive silently failing.

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For this very reason I use a cloud backup which backups to the cloud almost all the files on my computer and also keeps version backups.

The product I use is Backblaze, which comes with unlimited data plan and which keeps old file versions and deleted files for 30-days, extendible to up to 1-Year for additional $2/Month.

Such products are basically of the type "set it and forget it". They keep working in the background without your intervention.

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  • Thanks for your answer. I doubt this would have helped in my case, as far as I understand it works the same as the live backup that I mentioned - my live backup also let me go back 8 months, but by the time I noticed the corrupted files, all the backed-up versions were also copies of the same corrupted files. And I think this would have been no different with this service you recommended, or does this service provide something in addition to just backups?
    – flawr
    Commented Jun 19, 2021 at 18:16
  • If signed-up for the 1-year plan, you would have found your files. Otherwise, the solution could be to use rotating backup disks, which is also something I do. Your own live backup, if it's good for 8 months, could with 3 rotating backup disks, go back up to 24 months.
    – harrymc
    Commented Jun 19, 2021 at 18:38
  • So essentially you're proposing to make sure that I have many backups that are distributed over a longer period, right?
    – flawr
    Commented Jun 19, 2021 at 19:04
  • That's my attitude, to multiply backups of many types. If the backup disk(s) dies, I have cloud backup (more than one) and older disks. Sizeable cloud backups are sometimes available really cheap as promotions, and there are websites that track promotions.
    – harrymc
    Commented Jun 19, 2021 at 19:16
  • That makes sense, thanks for the recommendation.
    – flawr
    Commented Jun 19, 2021 at 19:55

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