How would you set up a decent backup setup?

JustAnotherSaver

Note: Doesn't have to be the most perfect of setups costing the biggest of budgets. Just has to do the job.

I'm a bit off it yet as I know it'll cost a bit, but 'end result' I was looking at having backups of my PC, my media library (movies & music) & backups of mobile phones.

I know they say you need more than 1 copy of the backup. I don't know how many is ideal within sensible boundaries. Obviously 2 is better than 1 and would make sense. 200 in 200 different locations is better than 2 but like I said - sensible boundaries.

Now I'm thinking that you'd need/want something like this.

With suitable drives inserted.

I'm thinking does this then connect direct to the home router? And you just backup straight to that.

Plex that has only really been used on the living room TV since I've been using it (Plex) is connected to the router also via cat6 so am assuming it could then stream direct from this connection.

And would assume you could then access any movie if you're staying away - say you're in a hotel & you've taken the laptop or iPad or whatever - you could pull any movie from Plex?

But without wanting to turn in to a Plex thread...

The question then comes for keeping a backup of your backup - which I know is ideally in a second location which could be at my mothers address.

Would you basically need to mirror that NAS enclosure setup there (as in get ANOTHER one of those, insert suitable drives, connect it direct to her own router).

Or would you do that end differently somehow?

Neil_Jones

If its important to you back it up and then back it up again.

How you do it is immaterial, because even a half-arsed backup is better than no backup at all.

You don't need to backup, but most people learn when they lose all their stuff.  So even just a bog standard external hard drive is better than nothing.

gefnew

If you want to keep all your system intact then best to make a system image and a recovery disc, it can be done in windows itself
then just attach usb hard drive with enough space to save it all.
How to: Create a system image in Windows 10 - Microsoft Community

[Deleted User]

The vital missing bit of information is how much data you want to back up - solutions differ depending on the amount.

For example but not hard and fast rules, I would consider:
100GB probably just cloud like one drive / google drive
1TB external USB drive
10TB NAS

Ideally you should backup both local and offsite for maximum resilience for precious files. I can advise more once you state how much you want to backup, but in the meantime I'll bore you with how I do mine:

1. PC - I store documents only - these backup using Windows File history automatically to my NAS every 15 mins in the background. 

2. NAS - 16TB QNAP - This contains above backup plus a photos / home videos / music  - about 2TB and around 9TB of movies and TV shows for my Plex server

3. 12 TB Seagate USB Backup drive connected to my NAS - backup of everything on the NAS (NAS is RAID5 so only 12TB of 16TB usable) auto backup daily with versioning.

4. NAS does automated job to Amazon Glacier to backup my photos / home videos / music (2TB=£3 a month). All my movies / TV shows can easily be re-downloaded via Sonarr / Radarr if needed so I don't do a cloud backup - 2 local copies enough.

5. 4 TB WD NAS - extra drive for TV shows and movies that I've watched and I'll probably delete - bit like a recycle bin - no backup.

Plex server = NVidia Shield Pro + 500GB SSD for database / thumbs etc

Raspberry PI + 500GB SSD = Radarr / Sonarr / Overseerr / Tautulli / Jackett / NZBGet / Qbittorrent 

All the automation software on the PI is exposed to the web via an Nginx reverse proxy running on my QNAP in a docker for security. Have my own domains with SSL and Plex SSO for external users to use Overseerr to request TV shows / movies.

[Deleted User]

gefnew said:

If you want to keep all your system intact then best to make a system image and a recovery disc, it can be done in windows itself
then just attach usb hard drive with enough space to save it all.
How to: Create a system image in Windows 10 - Microsoft Community

Not a great way of managing backups of data though - lot of data processing for each backup and ideally you need to backup at least daily for the differences only and version them - can't do that with a system image on a daily basis without massive storage requirements and the time required for each backup.

victor2

I backup my data drive (separate from my system drive) every night to a WD MyCloud 4TB drive connected to my router, using the free version of Macrium Reflect. That is set to do a full backup on the first of every month and differential backups daily. I hold 6 month's cycles with ease and it automatically deletes older ones than that. I have less than 100GB of data, including photographs.

I also backup to the free iDrive 5GB cloud service every night, but only for selected "essential" data directories. It holds up to 30 versions of the files without using any of your allowance. I have 100GB of Google Drive storage, which I pay £15.99 per annum for, having used up the 3 months free offer I got. I have my pictures directory synchronised to that, so they are in two places in the house and in the cloud, as they are irreplaceable.

Schedule tasks wake the computer out of hibernation every night to run the backlups, and it hibernates after they are done.

I also have an old HDD in a caddy, onto which I put an image of my system drive, when I feel the need to do so. I could reinstall everything on my system drive if I wanted, but it would probably take many days!

I have tested restoring from these various backups, and it all works!

Not the solution for everyone, but it suits my needs.

forgotmyname

Be careful where you store and possibly more so transferring backup files.  Used Windows backup and Acronis and others and transferred the backup
files onto newer media, although it scans as healthy some data did get corrupted. Luckily I have several backups with those files on but something
to think about.

Got bored of building backup systems and just bought a Synology now.  It just works.  Only issue these days is the size of the drives required and
how do you back large amounts of data without spending a fortune on drives?

Maybe its just me but I never delete anything.  Probably got images of windows 95 backups somewhere, I know there are several Win98 ones but
VM's are struggling running that older stuff now.

bengalknights

For files and folders i use a google drive thats placed within one drive 

For images etc i use a old pixel that i load up with what i want which then uploads to google photos in original format

Plasticman

I store everything in the cloud (Dropbox & Google Drive).
Cloud services sync to my NAS
NAS creates a backup every day

So if my NAS dies I've still got everything in the cloud. If my data in the cloud disappears I've still got it on my NAS (at the point when it was last synced) 

If my data in the cloud gets corrupted and syncs with the NAS I can still retrieve documents from backups on my NAS.

If data in the cloud gets corrupted and my NAS dies at the same time I'm screwed but that's fairly unlikely. 

IvanOpinion

My primary backup is using cloud storage. When I cut out all the 'garbage' I store on my PC I realised I only have about 1.5Tb of data that actually needs to be backed up. The majority of it is non changing e.g. music, photos, videos, ebooks etc. - that simply gets synched with my cloud provider.

There is also 6Gb encrypted partition were I store statements, receipts, pay packets etc. which, if I lost, I would be up the proverbial creek without means of propulsion. This is backed up to multiple cloud providers (again using sync technology).  The difference is that these files are encrypted client side and sent to zero-knowledge cloud storage.

My day-to-day file usage is also synched with a cloud provider. This means I have 6 months worth of versions of all files (allowing recovery against ransomware attacks).

All the above just happens automatically in the background requiring no intervention from me.

I also take a monthly backup onto a rotation of 3 external hard drives, plus one for my 'C:' drive (which does not contain any data, just OS and programs). These are all done using disk images. At the end of the month I plug one of the drives in, fire off the process to image the disk and go to bed.

Some people would criticise my use of syncing technology and disk imaging rather than using 'backups', but it works for me. I can't be bothered with restoration strategies, so if something goes wrong, I jump straight to DR and simply switch the disk in my computer (has only ever happened once, quick switch and let the cloud sync'd the disk back up to date in the background).  On the other hand I have had to grab some older versions of files from my cloud storage on a few occasions after messing something up.

The two big mistakes I often see are: not having a backup strategy; and overdoing a backup strategy, in some cases to the point of getting very little done because so much time is spent doing backups.

SiliconChip

forgotmyname said:

Maybe its just me but I never delete anything.  Probably got images of windows 95 backups somewhere, I know there are several Win98 ones but
VM's are struggling running that older stuff now.

Do you have any backups on 5 1/4" floppies? I only threw away the last of the 3 1/2" disks when I moved house in 2015 although I'd had no way to read them for quite a while before that