Question What are your backup strategies?

[mikejs78]

So I've just finished building my new system a couple of weeks ago and my next project is to turn to my backup strategy. I have an old WD 2TB NAS that I'm looking to replace with a new NAS (probably Synology or QNAP). We have multiple systems in our house (main desktop, Plex server desktop, 2 laptops (one for myself, one for my wife), and a Chromebook for our 13 year old that we got when he was doing remote school during COVID (which I'm not really worried about backing up due to the nature of Chromebooks).

On the desktops, I have system drives and then one or more drives for data and applications. Laptops are single drive.

I'm curious as to how people have their backup strategy set up... Image vs file backups, NAS RAID or not, cloud backup of NAS, full/differential/incremental, etc...

Thanks, and happy holidays to all who celebrate!

 

[USAFRet]

Read through here:

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

Mine is the top post, somewhat modified since I wrote it.

 

[kanewolf]

3-2-1 Three copies on at least two physical devices plus one copy off-site to protect from physical disaster.

 

[USAFRet]

And in there, I mention RAID 5.
That is now long gone. No RAID at all.

 

[iwant2breakfree]

Following as I"ve lost access to my external hard drive so I think I should get some extra knowledge 😥

 

[mikejs78]

Read through here:

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

Mine is the top post, somewhat modified since I wrote it.

Other than no RAID, how has your setup changed?

 

[USAFRet]

Other than no RAID, how has your setup changed?

Just minor adjustments.

Mostly, the composition of the drives. New, larger, more of them.

Basic concept is the same.
House PCs, laptops, workstations backup to the NAS.
NAS backs up to a whole other volume in the NAS.
Offsite is a couple of large drives in a desk drawer at work, refreshed quarterly or so.


For PC software, the landscape has changed somewhat.
My go to recommendation of Macrium Reflect is no longer "free".
But none of the others are either.

I recently did an in depth comparison of Macrium, Acronis, EaseUS, Minitool....none of the 'free' levels were adequate.
My current systems are grandfathered in with Macrium, but any new system will need to spend $$ for a license. However, given the overall functionality, that is a cost I will actually pay.