[SOLVED] Time to readdress my backup methods

[jm88]

For the most part, I have everything backed up through a cloud backup service (currently use idrive). I would also like to back it up to an external drive or something just to have redundancy. Is the best method to just get a large backup drive, like a WD Passport of Seagate Backup Plus drive or something that is USB 3? I just have a couple of old drives that are too small and USB 2 so would rather get one better one if that is the way to go. And then is it best to just have them sync up, or do actual full backups? I do have a USB 3 port on my router (I think) so if it could plug in there, that might be nice too to keep the clutter away from my desk, but it is not mandatory. Or maybe that could even allow other computers in the house to backup to it, but I am more concerned about the desktop because that is where all the photos and stuff are stored. The other laptops at least are synced up to One Drive. Anyways, just love to hear some opinions on a better way to do this.

 

[tennis2]

Yup, I just have a USB3 external hdd for backups.

Keep in mind that if you connect to your router, you'll be limited to the transfer speeds over your network, meaning that you'll need a gigabit connection from the respective device if you're going to have any hopes of saturating a USB3 hard drive connected to the router. I prefer to leave my backup "unpowered" to protect against the event of a power surge killing the backup drive IN ADDITION to my main system.

How you prefer to do backups varies from person to person.
I personally don't "create" a whole lot of new data, my "sensitivity" to downtime in the event of a data loss isn't "mission critical", and I have a SSD+HDD setup in my main system. Therefore, I only backup the photos/videos/music/etc from their respective folders once or twice a year. I have no need for bloating the backup (size and time) by including all the programs/windows files/updates/etc in that. Although I don't want to have a drive failure / data loss, I see such an event as a good opportunity to reformat and start fresh. There's a lot of program junk that piles up though the years.

 

[mdd1963]

Any external WD drive connected allows you to download utilize the free version of Acronis True Image.

You can also make easy full image backups via RescueZilla, or clones or image backups from within Windows via Macrium Reflect... (I do not trust WIndows' integrated offered backup methods entirely over...well, almost any other method.)

 

[USAFRet]

Macrium Reflect, and a couple of external HDD. Or a NAS.

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[jm88]

Yup, I just have a USB3 external hdd for backups.

Keep in mind that if you connect to your router, you'll be limited to the transfer speeds over your network, meaning that you'll need a gigabit connection from the respective device if you're going to have any hopes of saturating a USB3 hard drive connected to the router. I prefer to leave my backup "unpowered" to protect against the event of a power surge killing the backup drive IN ADDITION to my main system.

How you prefer to do backups varies from person to person.
I personally don't "create" a whole lot of new data, my "sensitivity" to downtime in the event of a data loss isn't "mission critical", and I have a SSD+HDD setup in my main system. Therefore, I only backup the photos/videos/music/etc from their respective folders once or twice a year. I have no need for bloating the backup (size and time) by including all the programs/windows files/updates/etc in that. Although I don't want to have a drive failure / data loss, I see such an event as a good opportunity to reformat and start fresh. There's a lot of program junk that piles up though the years.

I also have a SSD HDD combo and just have the OS and programs on the SSD, I do not care about backing that up and just want to back up my 4 TB HDD with all of the photos, documents, etc. on it. To backup that drive, would you set it up to just sync the two or do an actual incremental backup or whatever?

 

[jm88]

Macrium Reflect, and a couple of external HDD. Or a NAS.

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

So going with a NAS, that would mean saving all of my files to that instead of the local machine, right?

 

[USAFRet]

So going with a NAS, that would mean saving all of my files to that instead of the local machine, right?

Not necessarily.
Most of my data still lives on the PC. It gets backed up to the NAS.
My NAS holds a bunch of other things as well.

The main thing is to not have a single copy of anything you do not wish to lose.
Generally, 3-2-1.
3 copies, on at least 2 different media, at least 1 offsite.

 

[jm88]

Not necessarily.
Most of my data still lives on the PC. It gets backed up to the NAS.
My NAS holds a bunch of other things as well.

The main thing is to not have a single copy of anything you do not wish to lose.
Generally, 3-2-1.
3 copies, on at least 2 different media, at least 1 offsite.

If most of the data is on your PC, how is the NAS different than an external drive? Is it just because it is not connected to your PC? And if so, would I get the same results connecting a external drive to my router?

 

[USAFRet]

If most of the data is on your PC, how is the NAS different than an external drive? Is it just because it is not connected to your PC? And if so, would I get the same results connecting a external drive to my router?

In my case, the NAS is a very large "external thing", with a LOT of other capabilities. It is a feature rich Linux based server.
Currently, 50TB addressable drive space.

Holds the 4TB (and growing) movie collection, music collection.
Nightly or weekly Macrium backups of all the house systems.
2 of my security cameras record to it, 24/7, via a built in application. I can save a months worth of 24/7 camera in a 3TB space.

An external HDD connected to a router? If it works, great. The router brain is pretty small though. We've seen a lot of issues here where it can't keep up.

 

[jm88]

In my case, the NAS is a very large "external thing", with a LOT of other capabilities. It is a feature rich Linux based server.
Currently, 50TB addressable drive space.

Holds the 4TB (and growing) movie collection, music collection.
Nightly or weekly Macrium backups of all the house systems.
2 of my security cameras record to it, 24/7, via a built in application. I can save a months worth of 24/7 camera in a 3TB space.

An external HDD connected to a router? If it works, great. The router brain is pretty small though. We've seen a lot of issues here where it can't keep up.

It sounds like you have a pretty complex system and a lot more data. I currently have less than 2 TB but plan to start working with some videos soon and editing and creating movies out of all of the raw data so it may start to add up. Maybe for now I should just use an old external drive I have even though it is only USB 2 and connect it to the PC and see how much I end up needing and get a larger one as I grow. I guess since I have the online backup, at least I always have 2 copies in different locations. Or actually a 4 TB external is only $100 or this 8 TB Seagate is only $140 at Costco. Maybe that is worth it and that should be plenty for a long time.

 

[USAFRet]

It sounds like you have a pretty complex system and a lot more data. I currently have less than 2 TB but plan to start working with some videos soon and editing and creating movies out of all of the raw data so it may start to add up. Maybe for now I should just use an old external drive I have even though it is only USB 2 and connect it to the PC and see how much I end up needing and get a larger one as I grow. I guess since I have the online backup, at least I always have 2 copies in different locations. Or actually a 4 TB external is only $100 or this 8 TB Seagate is only $140 at Costco. Maybe that is worth it and that should be plenty for a long time.

Sure.
You can start out small. That 8TB for $140 is a great buy (I have one...😉 )

Overall, you're on the right track. It is much better to do something before you need it, rather than think about it 5 minutes after.
Far too many people get that backwards. A large percentage of issues we see in these Forums would not not exist if the person had a good backup routine.

And automate it as much as you can. My whole routine takes exactly zero seconds of my time per day. Let the software do it.

 

[jm88]

Sure.
You can start out small. That 8TB for $140 is a great buy (I have one...😉 )

Overall, you're on the right track. It is much better to do something before you need it, rather than think about it 5 minutes after.
Far too many people get that backwards. A large percentage of issues we see in these Forums would not not exist if the person had a good backup routine.

And automate it as much as you can. My whole routine takes exactly zero seconds of my time per day. Let the software do it.

Well if you approve of that one, I better get it That should last me a long time. I agree about the automation because I used to backup sometimes on to various drives, but it was manually, and I lost track of that, whereas the online backup is automated so I don't even think of it.

If I get that drive, is the software it comes with any good? And would I want to setup incremental backups (is that the one that just backups changes since last time), or is it better to just have it sync your drive? Seems like some way of having different versions might be better in case you accidentally erase something on your PC, then it wouldn't erase on the backup, right?

 

[USAFRet]

I use Macrium. I don't even remember what may have come with that drive.

Incremental or Differential.

Incremental is just the changes since the last Full or Incremental
Differential is all the changes since the last Full image.

If you do this daily, the size (and time) of the Differential will grow day by day.
But for a recovery, you only need the relevant Differential and the original Full image.
Incremntals, you need the original FUll, and all of the intervening Incrementals.

One of the nice things about Macrium Reflect is that you can mount an Image as a drive letter, and retrieve a single file if you need it.
Like the version of your resume from last Tuesday, before you changed it.
And I only do full drive images. No chance of forgetting to include a particular folder.

The backup folder on my NAS currently consumes 4.8TB space.
Multiple systems, over a dozen physical drives, recoverable up to any day in the last month.

 

[jm88]

I use Macrium. I don't even remember what may have come with that drive.

Incremental or Differential.

Incremental is just the changes since the last Full or Incremental
Differential is all the changes since the last Full image.

If you do this daily, the size (and time) of the Differential will grow day by day.
But for a recovery, you only need the relevant Differential and the original Full image.
Incremntals, you need the original FUll, and all of the intervening Incrementals.

One of the nice things about Macrium Reflect is that you can mount an Image as a drive letter, and retrieve a single file if you need it.
Like the version of your resume from last Tuesday, before you changed it.
And I only do full drive images. No chance of forgetting to include a particular folder.

The backup folder on my NAS currently consumes 4.8TB space.
Multiple systems, over a dozen physical drives, recoverable up to any day in the last month.

That sounds like it will be right for me because all of my data is only on one HDD and the OS and stuff are on another SSD which I do not care to backup. Incremental is the one I was thinking of. So you do an initial full backup then the incremental will just have all the new changes each time. So for example, if you have a full backup and then made a change to FILE.AAA, the incremental would just backup the new FILE.AAA but the original one would be kept as well in case you wanted to revert to it, rigiht?

 

[USAFRet]

That sounds like it will be right for me because all of my data is only on one HDD and the OS and stuff are on another SSD which I do not care to backup. Incremental is the one I was thinking of. So you do an initial full backup then the incremental will just have all the new changes each time. So for example, if you have a full backup and then made a change to FILE.AAA, the incremental would just backup the new FILE.AAA but the original one would be kept as well in case you wanted to revert to it, rigiht?

Precisely.

And then tomorrow, change it again. That file now exists in the Full, todays Incremental, and tomorrows Incremental, in 3 different versions.
Eventually, that first Incremental is deleted, according to your designated retention period.

 

[USAFRet]

And I have had to use that for an actual recovery.

Secondary drive, 960GB Sandisk SSD. 605GB data on it, mostly irreplaceable pics.
Died suddenly.
Click click in macrium, all 605GB recovered, exactly as it was at 4AM that morning when it ran the nightly Incremental.

 

[jm88]

And I have had to use that for an actual recovery.

Secondary drive, 960GB Sandisk SSD. 605GB data on it, mostly irreplaceable pics.
Died suddenly.
Click click in macrium, all 605GB recovered, exactly as it was at 4AM that morning when it ran the nightly Incremental.

It is great to hear a happy ending like that! I guess I feel good that I have an online backup, but if I actually had to recover it, I would prefer to have an actual drive with me that I can recover it from just in case something goes wrong.

 

[tennis2]

I also have a SSD HDD combo and just have the OS and programs on the SSD, I do not care about backing that up and just want to back up my 4 TB HDD with all of the photos, documents, etc. on it. To backup that drive, would you set it up to just sync the two or do an actual incremental backup or whatever?

Since I backup so infrequently (again, not creating a ton of new content over time), I don't automate my backups. I literally just copy/paste since all my backup data is stored in easy-to-find locations. If I exclude videos, my backup volume isn't very big (pictures being second largest). Since the backup files have timestamps and the active file directory has time stamps, it's not hard to figure out what files aren't on the backup.

There are other methods of backups (which I've been meaning to learn) which can parity-check the data for errors and such (data rot).

I dislike the WD automatic backup software that comes pre-installed on their external drives.

 

[jm88]

And I have had to use that for an actual recovery.

Secondary drive, 960GB Sandisk SSD. 605GB data on it, mostly irreplaceable pics.
Died suddenly.
Click click in macrium, all 605GB recovered, exactly as it was at 4AM that morning when it ran the nightly Incremental.

Well I just saved some money. I found a 2 TB external drive laying around that I forgot about. It is only USB 2.0 but I guess the speed is not that important. It may take a while to do the full backup but the differentials will be quick, and even if not, I guess it doesn't matter if I let them run at night!

 

[USAFRet]

Right.
That Full image will take a while, but the differentials won't.
Note though...differentials get larger as time goes on. "All changes since the original Full image."

 

[jm88]

Right.
That Full image will take a while, but the differentials won't.
Note though...differentials get larger as time goes on. "All changes since the original Full image."

AHHHHH! Sorry, I mean incremental. I keep getting those mixed up So the disadvantage to the incremental would just be that it would take longer to restore if you had to restore it, but all the files would still be the same, right?

 

[USAFRet]

AHHHHH! Sorry, I mean incremental. I keep getting those mixed up So the disadvantage to the incremental would just be that it would take longer to restore if you had to restore it, but all the files would still be the same, right?

Recovery time is about the same time.

The disadvantage of Incremental is that you must have ALL of the incrementals between the Full and the Incremental you wish to recover.

The disadvantage of Differential is that they get larger with each iteration.

 

[jm88]

Recovery time is about the same time.

The disadvantage of Incremental is that you must have ALL of the incrementals between the Full and the Incremental you wish to recover.

The disadvantage of Differential is that they get larger with each iteration.

That makes sense. But what is a scenario where you wouldn't have all of your incrementals? If you are doing this regularly to an external drive, they will all be there, right?

 

[USAFRet]

That makes sense. But what is a scenario where you wouldn't have all of your incrementals? If you are doing this regularly to an external drive, they will all be there, right?

One of them gets accidentally deleted or corrupted.

 

[jm88]

One of them gets accidentally deleted or corrupted.

Would you know if that were the case? Like, would the backup software notice it? Or is more likely to get accidentally deleted if you use the drive for other purposes than just strictly for backup?