title: Approach to properly archiving and backing up data, preventing data loss and corruption
body: <p>I'm looking for a proper way to archive and back up my data. This data consists of photos, video's, documents and more.</p>
  
  <p>There are two main things I'm afraid might cause data loss or corruption, hard drive failure and bit rot.</p>
  
  <p>I'm looking for a strategy that can ensure my data's safety.</p>
  
  <p>I came up with the following. One hard drive which I will regularly use to store and display data. A second hard drive which will serve as an onsite backup of the first one. And a third hard drive which will serve as an offsite backup. I am however not sure if this is sufficient.</p>
  
  <p>I would prefer to use regular drives, and not network attached storage, however if it's better suited I will adapt.</p>
  
  <p>One of the things I read about that might help with bit rot is ZFS. ZFS does not prevent bit rot but can detect data corruption by using checksums. This would allow me to recover a corrupted file from a different drive and copy it to the corrupted one.</p>
  
  <p>I need at least 2TB of storage but I'm considering 4TB to ensure potential future needs. </p>
  
  <p>What would be the best way to safely store my data and prevent data loss and corruption?</p>