Any advice for keeping my backup drives in a car trunk?

I want a second place to keep my hard drives that is not my apartment. I'm going to use my car trunk. Any advice? I live in NYC and it gets hot in the summer. Should I put them in a lunch cooler?

I don't think that a car trunk is a very good place. Both because it is hot in there…and the vibrations, bumps, and jolts when driving. And if someone breaks into your car…then they have all your info.

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

Both because it is hot in there…and the vibrations, bumps, and jolts when driving.

Click to expand...

And the cold - I've been to NYC in the winter and it's not only cold but it's a moist cold which I imagine probably isn't good for a hard drive (especially if it's subject to those conditions on a regular basis). In other words, it's not the temperatures so much (although this doesn't help) but rather the humidity and being on the eastern seaboard of North America, it's often damp (and trust me, I know...). Beyond that though, there's also the risk of theft. Ideally, your backups are in a place that are safe and while I'm sure that your neighbourhood is just fine, a car is much more likely to be broken into than something else such as a home or a business.

Is there any particular reason that you want to keep them in the trunk?

oxband said:

I want a second place to keep my hard drives that is not my apartment. I'm going to use my car trunk. Any advice? I live in NYC and it gets hot in the summer. Should I put them in a lunch cooler?

Click to expand...

Not a good idea to keep any electronic device stored in the trunk of your car.

The single reason for having backups is to allow you to restore from them should the need arise. For that reason only, they deserve to be stored in the right environment and somewhere safe.

Cheers ... McBie

This may not be a good solution for you but I think I have seen a few posts where some folks are keeping one set of backups in a safe deposit box at their bank. They have one backup at home which is kept updated and that is periodically swapped out with the one at the bank.

Of course that might not be a viable option depending upon how often you need to update things and how convenient it is to get to your bank. Cost may or may not be an issue depending upon your bank's policy. Some offer a free safe deposit box, some free with certain types of accounts, others charge a fee depending upon the size of the box.

Was that really a serious question the boot of a car with such extremes as summer and winter temperatures?

It is a serious question. I don't get a free security box with my bank. I could look into other ones.

I simply mentioned the security box as one means of secure, off site storage. I have not tried it personally. Although it has merits I think some people would not swap the drives out often enough. The result being that the drive at the bank would be hopelessly out of date compared to the main drive or other backup.

If you're considering off site storage and have to pay your local bank a monthly fee for safe deposit, you may as well go with a good on line backup strategy. The price might be cheaper and it would be available to you regardless of your present location as long as you have access to the net. That would be my choice rather than deal with the hassle of a safe deposit box.

The thing with online backups is that you have no guarantee that your data will be available ( ever ) when you need to do a restore. Secondly, a restore will take ages ( depending on the size of the restore ) and lastly you have no control over your backup data .... you just give it away to someone you don't know.

A cloud is using the internet to store my personal data on someone else's computer in an unknown country.

I believe that sums it up.

Now back to the original post .... if the OP wants to keep 2 copies of a backup, that to me indicates that this data is valuable ( why else would you do that ) and the only good way forward is to store that in a correct environment which is safe and which you have control over.
Lastly, protecting your valuable data comes at a cost. The only thing that is free in this world is the sun rising in the east every day ( Then again you never know with the Japanese, they might want to turn that off one day. )


Cheers ... McBie

Buy yourself a good (small) fireproof safe to install in your home. Accessible, relatively cheap and a lot "safer" than the boot of your car.

All good suggestions. OP: Your choice now.