The 3-2-1 backup strategy: "Three copies are made of the data to be protected, the copies are stored on two different types of storage media and one copy of the data is sent off site."
Any redundant backup strategy uses both. They both have inherent data loss risks. Local backups are great, but unless you store them in a bunker they are still at risk to fire, theft, vandalism and natural disasters. A good backup strategy stores copies in at least three locations. Local, off-site and the cloud. Off-site backups are backups you can physically retrieve. Like tapes stored in a vault in another city.
I’ve got a bunch of high capacity SD cards that i converted into little storage drives. I throw movies and tv shows I download onto them and it’s great for handing off to a friend or throwing into a device real quick.
I got these individual usb SD card readers but they get really hot if you leave them on all the time. So it’s nice to only turn it on when I need to read or write to them. The added security benefit is that when they are off you literally can’t hack them.
Oh ok. So you're using them effectively like cold storage backups? I was scared you were going to tell me that you were running an ZFS pool off a USB hub, lol.
I’d say that’s an accurate summary of my activities. It’s nice to plug in one usb and hit the buttons as needed. I hate fiddling around with it since micro SD cards are super easy to lose track of.