Cold Storage
Two external WD Elements drives, kept powered off and disconnected by default, used as the cold tier of the 3-2-1 backup strategy. The drives rotate so that one is always offline while the other is being written to — a single failure or compromise should never reach both copies at once.
Every drive is fully encrypted with VeraCrypt before any data is written. Without the passphrase the disks are useless, which keeps the cold copies safe even if a drive is lost, stolen, or returned under warranty.
Drives
| Component | Model | Qty | Encryption |
|---|---|---|---|
| HDD | WD Elements | 2 | VeraCrypt (full disk) |
Role
- Cold, offline copy — drives sit unplugged in storage between sync runs.
- Doubled — two independent drives kept in sync so one can fail without losing the cold tier.
- Complements the live off-site copy on the Synology DS723+ (hot storage) and the primary pool on the TrueNAS build.