Question Best Way for Backup Drives to Live?

[Oasis Curator]

I currently have a 2-bay hot swappable caddy thing that allows me to back up files to various hard drives.
Two of those hard drives are mirrored, but I do this manually.
I back things up every 6 months or so.

I'm thinking of a better solution, that means I can power up all the drives at the same time (I currently have 5 drives).
I'd like them to be attached to my network so when they're powered, I can see them in Windows and

First thought was a NAS but these are quite expensive.
The low power interests me but as I am unlikely to have the unit on all the time anyway, it may not matter.

Second thoughts were for a simple second PC.
I can in fact get a £600 one for £300 right now, which includes 16TB of hard drives. I won't need these particularly, unless I decide to upgrade my current storage drives but at least I'd have space for future expansion.

Third thoughts were some sort of rack server thing.
I don't know what I am doing with this so would be fun to learn but would they take more or less power than a simple PC?
I also wouldn't get a proper rack, just secure the device somewhere and power it on whenever I want to back things up.

I'd like to access the backup solution over the network as it's likely it would be in a different location than the PC.

Are there any other thoughts on this?

 

[Ralston18]

£300 = $380 (US) per online calculators.

I recently purchased a Synology DS223J NAS on sale via MicroCenter for less than $200 US. I installed my own available drive.

Price the NAS units available to you and consider purchasing a unit without drives and then install one of your own drives.

I had the luxury of not needing to be concerned about power consumption per se. Ran the NAS for awhile at 24/7 but then configured it to shutdown between midnight and 6:00 a.m.

My thought is that purchasing a new NAS will be cost effective in the longer run and you should have some warranties as well.

Overall simpler and easier. DIY (FreeNAS) via a second PC etc. is viable but all too likely will end up being problematic.

I suggest rethinking your options. Go online and read a few NAS User Guides/Manuals to learn more about what is necessary to implement a NAS solution. Price products available to you and look for sales.

And, NAS is good but but of limited value if only backing up every 6 months or so.

Rethink your backup plan as well.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

 

[USAFRet]

A few years ago, I was at the same decision point as you.

Build up a new PC/server, or go NAS.

After comparing ALL the variables, the NAS won handily.

7 years of 24/7 ops later, it was absolutely the right choice.

 

[Misgar]

(I currently have 5 drives).

If you want to use all 5 drives (possibly more) at the same time, then you'd need a multi-bay NAS chassis if you choose that solution.

A 5-bay Synology DS1522+ is a hefty £669.97 on Amazon UK. Higher capacity units will probably cost even more.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Synology-DS1522-5-Bay-Desktop-Solution/dp/B0B2RN4SJT

I can in fact get a £600 one for £300 right now, which includes 16TB of hard drives.

With 16TB total disk capacity and at only £300, that sounds like a second hand PC. Nothing wrong with that. I re-use old PCs and servers to build TrueNAS Core servers (the successor to FreeNAS). Ideally, you'd fill a TrueNAS server with multiple drives of the same capacity, then set up RAID-Z1 (1 disk redundancy) or RAID-Z2 (2 disc redundancy).

I would not recommend TrueNAS unless you're prepared to spend some (considerable) time reading up about this operating system. There are handy guides, but it still takes some time to sort things out. So saying, I now have four TrueNAS servers.

https://www.truenas.com/download-truenas-core/

but would they take more or less power than a simple PC?

I have a couple of old HP ML350P Gen.8 servers, one with 6 hard disks, the other with 8. Surprisingly, when idle, they "only" consume 110W. These are heavy beasts at roughly 40kg each with drives. They are also phenomenally noisy when the cooling fans spin up to full speed at startup.

If you want an easy life and are happy to continue copying files to a random collection of disks without any automation or assistance, use a cheap computer. It will cost less than a large capacity brand new NAS.

If you do use a PC, make sure it has adequate cooling for the hard disks. When you stack hard disks together in a confined space with no cooling, they can get quite hot.

 

[Oasis Curator]

After comparing ALL the variables, the NAS won handily.

7 years of 24/7 ops later, it was absolutely the right choice.

What NAS did you get in the end?

 

[Oasis Curator]

If you want an easy life and are happy to continue copying files to a random collection of disks without any automation or assistance, use a cheap computer. It will cost less than a large capacity brand new NAS.

Some good thoughts here.

A lot of my stuff doesn't need regular back ups as the files aren't really touched or changed.

The disks aren't random - they're well organised. I guess I use them as storage as well as back up.
Some disks are purely back ups of what's on my PC, others are storing media files that I'll probably never watch but I'm a bit of a horder. The latter are mixed with media files on my HTPC, so also serve as a back up for that stuff. But it doesn't need constant back ups as the media files don't change. They're backed up and that's that.

But that £600 is what made me think I could buy something that will be suitable for half the price. I could even reuse the case in the future if I want to build another PC.

 

[MJS WARLORD]

i cant afford to go to the expense of what some of you are doing to make back ups so i have a different approach.

I have individual flash drives and use them to back up photos , videos , documents , save game folders and music. I also put all of them onto a bigger flash drive , i only add to the back ups when i have something new to put on them and i dont leave them plugged in.

I do a clean install of windows once a year because it does not actually take all that long.
System restore is turned off because i consider it a joke and in the majority it cant get you out of a mess.
I use ESET anti virus and once a week i run defender and malwarebytes.

Question of the day .... how many of you remember to back up photos on your phone incase it gets lost or stolen.

 

[Misgar]

I'm a bit of a horder.

Same here. I have tons of stuff I might never use again, going back into the mists of (my computing) time.

The disks aren't random - they're well organised...... They're backed up

The critical thing (as others will remind you) is to keep at least 3 copies of files you couldn't bear to lose, on 3 different devices/locations. I'm thinking family and holiday photos, videos, documents, etc.

If any of your drives died suddenly, in the PC, HTPC, or external, with no hope of file retrieval, do you still have at least two more copies elsewhere?

If not, act soon. ransomware, hardware failure, accidents, floods, theft, can all affect your treasured memories. If you can download the film again, there's far less need to worry.

But that £600 is what made me think I could buy something that will be suitable for half the price

Although a brand new machine or dedicated NAS should give you the longest (expected) life, if you have a second hand PC lying around or find one on eBay, you could repurpose it as a simple file server.

A file server computer doesn't have to be anything fancy, just make sure it has a quality PSU with a long warranty (7+ years), plenty of SATA power leads and room in the case for multiple drives. If you pay £50 to £100 for a second hand PC, you can spend the rest of the money saved on some more hard disks and make a 3rd copy of critical files.

It's easy to spend £500 on tens of Terabytes of storage but personally I would avoid buying just one big 20TB+ hard disk. Too many eggs in one basket. Better to split the risk of early hard disk failure and buy several lower capacity drives.

A 6TB Toshiba N300 NAS drive in one of my TrueNAS Core home-built servers developed bad blocks after only 6 days (144 hours) total use. The drive was purchased brand new and the other five 6TB drives in the RAID-Z2 array are fine (for now). I replaced the ailing drive and resilvered the array.

The suspect 6TB drive still "works" after a long SMART surface scan, but it vibrates far more than its counterparts. I've relegated it to a HTPC where its (imminent?) failure is not important.

The advantage of RAID-Z2 is i can lose up to two hard disks from an array and my data is still "safe", but only if nothing else goes wrong on the remaining drives. If a whole array dies, I've got multiple backups all over the place.

Moral of the story, you cannot trust hard disks (or SSDs) to work forever. Some fail early.

You might find it interesting to download a trial copy of Hard Disk Sentinel and see if any of your hard disks or SSDs are failing.

https://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_sentinel_trial.php

It's handy for identifying dodgy SATA cables, symptoms of which are multiple communications errors. After replacing the SATA cable and further testing, you can zero the error counter.

 

[Misgar]

Question of the day .... how many of you remember to back up photos on your phone incase it gets lost or stolen.

Answer, I hardly everbackup photos from my smartphone. I if doubt I've taken more than 150 images on a smartphone in the last 6 years.

I'm in the fortunate position of having several DSLRs which I use for "serious" work on holiday. When weight is an issue, I carry a digital compact camera instead. I like big glass and big sensors. The only time I use my very cheap smartphone is when I don't have a bigger camera with me.

I find my smartphone very restrictive. With a DSLR, if I spot an something interesting approaching when I'm travelling in a moving vehicle, I can raise the camera eyepiece up to my eye, zoom into the scene, frame the picture, take a shot, zoom back slightly, take another photo, zoom back again and take a third image. All done in less than 6 seconds and 3 perfectly framed shots.

On my cheap and cheerful smartphone, I wouldn't have enough time to unlock it, let alone faff around trying to frame and take a shot. Even if I had my smartphone already unlocked, I still wouldn't be able to zoom in or out whilst tracking a fast approaching object. The most I could do is to use burst mode at a fixed focal length and crop the resultant images, losing detail and quality. Perhaps AI can help?

As for making frequent backups you're 100% right. Spot on!

On vacation I backup my memory cards each evening on two laptops and make a third copy on an external portable SSD. After performing a byte-by-byte comparison of each copy with the original files in the card reader (using FreeFileSync) I wipe the cards in preparation for the next day. I sometimes end up with over 100GB of stills per day (RAW+JPG) and a similar amount of 4K video from a GoPro.

Yes i know it's excessive, but who cares when you're on the trip of a lifetime? The main problem is lugging all that (unecessary) weight around, but for me, the quality and controllability of dedicated cameras outweighs the lightness and ease of carrying a smartphone in my back pocket. Whatever floats your boat!

 

[USAFRet]

What NAS did you get in the end?

4 bay QNAP TS-453a. And later, a TR-004 4 bay pod. And also a 4 bay MediaSonic USB enclosure.

So, 12 drives total. Just under 100TB.
But, not all at once. It grew as time went on.

It holds nightly/weekly backups of all the house systems, the movie and music libraries, long term photo storage, etc, etc.

 

[MJS WARLORD]

4 bay QNAP TS-453a. And later, a TR-004 4 bay pod. And also a 4 bay MediaSonic USB enclosure.

So, 12 drives total. Just under 100TB.
But, not all at once. It grew as time went on.

It holds nightly/weekly backups of all the house systems, the movie and music libraries, long term photo storage, etc, etc.

even if i could afford all that i dont think i would be clever enough to work out how to use it all lol

 

[USAFRet]

even if i could afford all that i dont think i would be clever enough to work out how to use it all lol

Start small.

2 bay QNAP, $240
https://www.amazon.com/QNAP-TS-216G-US-Affordable-Cortex-A55-Built/dp/B0D1WYD1DB

 

[Oasis Curator]

i only add to the back ups when i have something new to put on them and i dont leave them plugged in.

This is me.

I save stuff on a partition ready to transfer and when it's getting full or it's been there for months, I'll boot up the storage / backup drives and transfer it from the main PC.

The drives then stay in anti static bags in a drawer. I know, shoot me! But it's the best I can do right now.

However, having them in a PC just means I have to boot the PC up whenever I want to transfer things. I can easily transfer between my HTPC and main PC. It's not automatic and I know if I put in much more effort, I could do a lot of this automatically but as the backup PC won't be on all the time, it's not so easy. Plus, I'm at a time in life where I can't really dedicate any time to researching and learning about it.

Some really great input here though.

 

[USAFRet]

Regarding power consumption, my 4 bay QNAP is about 25 watts at idle. Add in the other 2 4 bay pods, and we're still under 50 watts total.
Meaning letting it run 24/7 is under $50 per year.