[GNC] Thinking about Moving to MacOS from Win 10

[John Ralls]

> On Apr 27, 2021, at 6:49 AM, Michael or Penny Novack <stepbystepfarm at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> On 4/26/2021 12:44 PM, Jack Frillman via gnucash-user wrote:
>> Just copy the main data file.
>> I copy it from my iMac to my Linux laptop for a backup and to a Windows 10  laptop for a backup to my Linux laptop.
>> Any reports you create will require copying a different file though. 
> 
> 
> Just a suggestion from somebody who went through recovery after a house fire << we did have data recovery coverage and ONE of the drives of ONE of the computers was not too smoke damaged for the recovery lab to get the data from that one; the rest, no dice. And if we had not had that rider on our policy, the cost would have been prohibitive >>
> 
> Maybe not every time, but once in a while, maybe monthly, make a copy of the data on your machines to either ROM medium or an external drive that will reside elsewhere (not in the same building). Ours (now) goes onto a drive that lives in a fire safe in the barn, only at risk of "same building" when brought into the house to make the backup. Of course you COULD use a "cloud server" but I do not care to allow third party access to my data.
> 
> If you are a business, your accountant SHOULD be telling you to do this as "standard procedure" for a business.

I guess the barn would be OK if you don't live in California where whole towns go up in smoke. 

Cloud storage is IMO an ideal backup medium because not only is it far away it's likely replicated to multiple data centers. If you're concerned that the cloud provider's encryption isn't sufficient you can layer your own on top of it. macOS provides an encrypted disk image that I've used for several years with Google Drive, but there are a couple of Windows solutions that have caused trouble in the past so test thoroughly before committing to any utility.

Regards,
John Ralls