Most people realize too late that they didn’t have backups of their data or don’t realize they can easily setup their own media servers at home. What do you use and suggest? Everything from beginner tech knowledge to advance. TIA
I’m all about keeping it simple with a NAS drive at home and cloud backups for that extra peace of mind. Having a local copy is great in case of internet issues, but the cloud is there for when disaster strikes. A mix like that gives you flexibility and quick access for your media needs!
I have my important folders synced to my nextcloud and do nightly backups of that using borg.
There is no one size fits all for how someone should do their backups, it really depends on what you have and how much. What do I have? Over 100TB on a redundant unrais server with it backed up off-site. That’s probably overkill though. Most people would just benefit from an external hard drive with automated backups set up.
If you want to know it’s safe, the go to solution is 3-2-1. 3 total copies of your data across 2 different types of data storage, with one of them off site. That’s the only way to truly know your data is safe.
Are there certain brands of external hard drives you recommend for local backup?
The WD elements drives are pretty rock solid. The drives themselves are WD reds inside, which are very reliable. The only iffy thing is if the control board (the device that converts USB to the internal drive) can fail, but that’s true for any external. It’s my go-to backup solution.
theyre the drives i buy and shuck. Love me WD reds.
ATM
Most of the files are local to my PC
Backed by Veeam to an SMB share.Anything else like videos, music etc. are on my media server
Raid is not a backup!
Double Parity is enough of an backup for files that are not important.
Reason why vacation pics are on my IP >_>
SMB file share, nightly backup for files, monthly backup for entertainment media, both to a RAID 1 18TB backup mount. Important docs also copied to a flash drive that I keep at an off site location, and swap about once a month.
Personally I never reached a point where I had to use any kind of storage software. All you need is a good external storage and a little bit of organization.
If anyone is serious about data storage I would honestly choose external SSDs or an enclosure that supports SSDs. I’ve had terrible experiences with hard drives failing over the years or clicking and corrupting my data.
Where do you put your SSDs, though? If it’s not off-site, it’s not a backup.
I use Backblaze for all offsite backups
Same for me, Backblaze is the shit
same here
Local I have trueNAS raid Z2 for photos/docs/home dirs/etc (backed up to backblase) and a zfs mirror for music/movies/etc not backed up
Follow the 3-2-1 rule for all data you would be upset to lose. Having a server (really just any networked computer that can receive and store enough data) is the easiest way to accomplish “1” and “2”. Then encrypt and send that data offsite to either another server you maintain or to the cloud.
Is there a cloud service you recommend?
I recommend treating the cloud service as just a file host for one or more encrypted backup files/directories. If you do that, then you can use a huge range of hosts without worry.
A nice option is ab S3-compatible host. Whatever is reasonably cheap and well-liked. These hosts often allow you to keep two or more “versions” of your backups at free or reduced storage prices, which is a pretty great layer of added redundancy. They are also compatible with a ton of software tools.
I avoid listing the ones I personally use (I actually do 2 offsite copies) for infosec reasons.
I use Onedrive for storing files offsite, and a Synology NAS for onsite. I’ve got my PC as the main source of my files, and use Syncthing to sync to my laptop and NAS, and Onedrive syncing the PC and NAS to the cloud.
I know Onedrive isn’t always popular here, but it does everything I need, and is cheap. It also lets me access my files from my phone
Hard copy.
Photos in a photo album, documents in a filing cabinet.
Okay but like what if your house burns down
It’s good to have some kind of backup for worst case scenariosOtherwise I totally agree. I feel like the only way I’ll actually look at my photos is if they’re physically there for me to see.
This is why I’m scanning in all my old physical photos. It’s great to go through the originals, but if anything was to happen, they’d be gone forever.
What scanner do you use?
It’s an Epson Stylus, 235w I think. I’m not home to check at the moment. It’s not amazing, but it scans at up to either 1200 or 2400 dpi, and I usually use 600 dpi, as that’s more than enough for the typically low quality photos I’ve got.
I’m sticking with it on Windows for now too, as the software can do some corrections with one click, like certain colour corrections. I’ve tried a few Linux packages, and while they’re good, they’re all missing something compared to the Epson Windows software.
Photos are stored in iCloud but originals of every photo is kept on both my iPhone and Mac. Plex library, it is stored with Unraid Parity, and additionally I’ve got all the magnet links in one spreadsheet.