In the past I stored my backup in a 3.5 internal hard disk inside my pc tower, but I read it is better to use an external hard disk to store backup so I store my backup in an external hard disk, I have copied and paste some of the info I read at the end of this post. It seems like an external hard disk is more protected from "disaster strikes (Ransomware, lightning strike, catastrophic PC failure, etc.)". Correct me if I am wrong.
Yes, USB ports have a fuse so they're somewhat better protected against power surges, and they don't pull power directly from the power supply but rather through the motherboard's power circuitry. But an external power supply on the drive doesn't make it more isolated as the USB power pins are still connected and live. The biggest reason for using an external drive is being able to just unplug it and run if there's a fire, flood, tornado, etc.
"If you really just need to retain backups that long, just get a larger drive instead of replacing them." > My first backup is a full backup e.g. 01 Jan 2020 is first full backup, and then daily incremental backup 02 Jan 2020 is 1st incremental backup, 03 Jan 2020 is 2nd incremental backup...until the disk is full e.g. 31 Dec 2020 then I replace the disk with an empty one and repeat the process e.g. 01 Jan 2021 and redo a first full backup again and daily incremental backup the next day 02 Jan 2021 onwards. If I only have 1 larger drive, I will not be able to have many weeks of backup if I just deleted the old backup e.g. disk is full on 31 Dec 2020 and I delete the whole disk then on 01 Jan 2021 and redo first full backup again and daily incremental backup the next day onwards, if on 01 Feb 2021 I want to refer to a backup done 3 months ago (backup done on Nov 2020) , I am unable to do so because the backup has been deleted.
If you have a larger drive, you don't NEED to delete the previous year's backup (depending on how much space they all take up). If 2025's backups take up 8TB and you have a 16TB drive, then you just start a new full backup on Jan 01 2026 and a new chain of incrementals. So instead of having 2025 on a separate drive, it's right there on the same drive.
But given that your intent is only to have two drives anyway and keeping one year on each one, an enclosure with two 8TB drives that you swap would be more cost-effective than even the WD 16TB external drive. My suggestion of using that one 16TB was based on not knowing exactly what your backup routine was and how much data you were actually backing up. Yes that 8TB WD drive would be equivalent to the Seagate drive, and I'd go with that for reliability if you were buying a pre-built unit. (They don't have to offer recovery services to ensure your data will be safe!)
You can't save money by "building your own" 16TB external drive because you can't buy a low-cost 16TB hard drive to put into the enclosure. Consumer drives max out at 8TB right now. The only 16TB 3.5 inch drives are meant for enterprises or use in NASes, and they cost a lot more. Western Digital and Seagate are able to make a 16TB USB drive basically because they are the ones that set the arbitrary price, and they use the cheapest, slowest drive to do it. So they can make a USB version that isn't as expensive as the enterprise drives, but they haven't started selling the 3.5 inch drives by themselves yet.
The 3-2-1 rule is that you have THREE copies of your data, on TWO types of storage (SSD, mechanical drive, cloud, tape, etc.), with ONE of them being offsite. So you have your original data on your PC, plus two backups, and one of those backups is offsite. For a consumer, that could mean that one of your backups is just an external USB drive of any type, and you also have your main files syncing to OneDrive or Google Drive or iCloud or something like that, or you use a specific backup service that saves them offsite. (Some people argue that cloud syncing isn't backup, but it definitely is, as you have a copy of the most important data files in a different location in case something destroys your house and PC and the USB backup drive. You just have to be certain that the files you NEED are actually synced, and that the sync process doesn't fail. OneDrive only syncs certain folders so you have to save your files to those, but Google Drive will let you sync any folders you want so you have more freedom about where your files are stored.)
"Internal drive with a dock" refers to a docking bay that goes into your PC case, in one of the 5.25 inch bays where an optical drive (or floppy drive) would go, and can be externally accessed. (Dock is a confusing name, but you are "docking" the drive itself.) They allow you to quickly insert or remove a 3.5 or 2.5 inch drive, but it's connected using SATA so it's much faster than USB but not quite as fast to unplug in an emergency, and it's connected directly to the PC's power supply.
Here is an example. When you pop the front cover open, it usually pulls the hard drive out a little bit, disconnecting it from the SATA connector and making it so that you can grab onto it and remove it. Other models use a caddy that you put the drive into before inserting it into the bay. Then you can just stick another drive in, if you're rotating them. (Not ALL motherboards support disconnecting and connecting a drive while the PC is running, or you may have to enable the option in the BIOS.)
https://www.amazon.com/Seaocloud-Trayless-Mobile-Internal-Adapter/dp/B08HSXHKWD
The main reason for using one of these instead of USB in the past was the transfer speed, since direct SATA is so much faster than USB 2.0. But with USB3 and higher, USB is more than enough for a mechanical drive when doing backups. Even an SSD is not going to be much faster with SATA than plugging it in with USB3 for this purpose. But SATA does have an advantage in "normal" operations where you're reading and writing random data, so these docks do still have a purpose. An internal dock can be cheaper than a USB enclosure, but for the purposes of backup I think the enclosure is slightly better.
"Store cold" just means doing what you're doing, removing the backup drive and setting it aside, not plugged into anything, so it's physically colder than one that is plugged in. In order to get data from it, you have to connect it to the PC. This is the opposite of "hot" where the drive is always plugged in and ready to access, even if it's just sitting there idle most of the time. ("Cold", "warm", and "hot" are also used to refer to the performance tiers where the data is stored, usually for enterprise/datacenter storage. Hot means it's on the fastest drives in the system so it can be retrieved as quickly as possible at the highest throughput, like on SSDs. Warm means it's on slower storage like low-RPM mechanical drives because it doesn't need to be accessed as often and isn't needed as quickly. Cold can just mean disconnected drives but also often means the data is stored on optical discs or tapes that might even be sitting in an offsite location, so they're VERY slow if you need their data.)
Any cloud file sync service would work for offsite. As I mentioned, OneDrive (which is conveniently built-into Windows and enabled by default with your MS account), Google Drive, or iCloud, but there are others like Proton Drive, Dropbox, etc., and they each have their own special features.
One issue with cloud storage is that you only have a limited number of revisions that are retained rather than being able to go back as far as you want no matter how many times the file was changed within a certain amount of time. The cloud sync is basically the "absolutely everything in my house was destroyed but at least I have the latest copy of all my important files" backup, not meant to let you fix your screwups that happened multiple times over a long period.
Google Drive for example keeps 100 revisions OR the last 30 days worth of changes. So if you make 100 changes to a file in 10 days, you'll be able to access all 100 versions. But if it takes 120 days to make 100 changes, you can only access the changes you made in the last 30 days. If you haven't made any changes in the last 30 days, then you can only access the current version.
I use Google Drive and pay for additional storage beyond the default since I've already got my main account there with all my other stuff like my Android phone backups, WhatsApp backup, etc. Unlike OneDrive, Google and others will let you select arbitrary folders to be synced to the cloud, not just the special Windows folders like Desktop, Documents, Pictures, etc. But OneDrive can be helpful for some people because it means every computer you log into sees the same files on the Desktop, in Documents, etc. Proton Drive uses end to end encryption, so even if the government comes and asks for your data, Proton can't actually read the files.
Whichever one you choose, you just need to be sure that it is syncing the folders where your data is located are part of the sync, that you have enough free space in your cloud account to store all of your data, and that the sync process is working properly (just check the icon once in a while to be sure there are no warnings and that it says it's up to date, or create a new file on your computer and then check the website for the cloud account to be sure it appears there). That's no different from making sure your backups have been running every night.
If you pay for enough storage, you could even use the cloud service to make backups of the backups on the external drive, by just copying them to the cloud after each night's backup is complete.
I will make one other recommendation, which may or may not be possible depending on just how big your backups are - don't make just one full backup a year. Keeping an entire year of incremental backups can be risky. With incrementals, EVERY file in the chain is critical if you need to recover data. If even one of them gets corrupted, all the backups past that date become useless. So if you make a full backup on Jan 01, then incrementals every night through the year, and discover you need to recover a file from Jun 06, the backup application has to read the full backup and every single incremental from Jan 02 to Jun 06 in order to build the recovery data (which means recovery also takes a long time to set up). If the file from Mar 03 was unreadable, maybe because of a bad sector on the hard drive, then you would not be able to recover any changes made after Mar 02.
Differentials use more space, a LOT more space by the end of the year, but a differential backup is independent of all previous differentials. Diff backups record the changes since the last full backup, not since the last differential. So you only need the full backup and the differential from the date you want to recover. But by the end of the year, a differential backup could be 50% of the size of the full backup if you did them through the year.
If you have enough space, or could buy additional drives and rotate them every 6 months instead, it would be safer to perform a new full backup every 6 months, starting a new incremental chain. Or even every 3 months. Or just buy one extra drive, and do a separate full backup every 6 months while continuing to do the yearly backup and incrementals.
Also, to save space, most backup software has an option to "consolidate" the incrementals or differentials. So you could configure it to keep everything for 3 months, then consolidate older backups. That would mean for example that on April 01, the incrementals from Jan 02 to Jan 09 would be consolidated. They get modified so there is just the one from Jan 09. Every week after that, the oldest week gets consolidated. (Consolidation means combining the changes in the data into one file so the chain is not dependent on the ones that are being removed.) This saves a ton of space, but won't work for you if you are concerned about being able to recover small changes that might have been made on ANY specific day. Most home users are okay with just having copies of the most recent versions of their files, and at least having SOME previous version available even if it's not quite from the day they needed, as they can fix it up if needed.
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