Best/Easiest Backup Solution (Hardware & Software)?

[Slowboathome]

What's the easiest, most reliable solution for regularly backing up about 100gb of data?

I need hardware and software recommendations.

Not interested in online backups or things that will survive a nuclear war. Just want something simple (ie, not technically complicated) for my data.


Desktop PC with Windows 10.

Thank you!

[Murph7355]

Use the built in tools that come with Windows (backup and file history).

Get a NAS on the network and point backup and file history at it. For my really important stuff I then use rsync to another NAS in a different building to cover the situation where the house goes up in smoke.

Test it regularly by accessing the backups and bringing files back.

[wiggy001]

Slowboathome said:

What's the easiest, most reliable solution for regularly backing up about 100gb of data?

I need hardware and software recommendations.

Not interested in online backups or things that will survive a nuclear war. Just want something simple (ie, not technically complicated) for my data.


Desktop PC with Windows 10.

Thank you!

You need to decide what risk you are trying to mitigate. If you want to save your files after a house fire destroys your pc then you need online or something that is otherwise remote. If you want to insure yourself again viruses you need something not permanently connected to your pc.

Ideally you need both.

I use OneDrive for the former and EaseUs backing up to an external hard drive each month for the latter.

[Griffith4ever]

I've been using Nas solutions for many years now. Cheap, painless, and effective. By effective, I mean the backups actually happen. Every time. Ex it management and I can tell you the most important feature of any backup is actually doing it :-)

I currently use:

Synology raid 2 disk Nas. Best hardware web interface I've seen for a Nas.
You get oodles of storage too.
Synology active backup app (free and on the Nas) scheduled to weekly backup shared windows 10 folders, including outlook PST files.
I then have a simple 1TB USB disk plugged into the Nas.
Once every two weeks a free Nas app called hyper backup then backs up the active backup data to the external USB disk. Which then gets stored in another outbuilding .

Only thing you have to do is schedule the backup when you think your pc will be on. If the backup fails you'll get an email telling you. You then open active backup, highlight the job, and click backup! I have to do this occasionally when I forget to close outlook so it can have full access to the pst files.

The email reports mean you never fail to take a backup. Unless you are stupid and ignore them. In which case you'd not be here asking for a backup solution :-)

Edit . If you want to cover all bases , buy two usb external disks and rotate them so when you put one in the shed there is one there waiting to replace it.

Edited by Griffith4ever on Tuesday 28th September 08:02

[deckster]

Slowboathome said:

What's the easiest, most reliable solution for regularly backing up about 100gb of data?

I need hardware and software recommendations.

Not interested in online backups or things that will survive a nuclear war. Just want something simple (ie, not technically complicated) for my data.


Desktop PC with Windows 10.

Thank you!

Are you regularly backing up 100GB of data? Or do you have 100GB of largely static stuff that you need to keep backed up?

And yes, NAS, removable drive, remember to do swap it out with the remote copy you keep in the shed, test your restore, etc. etc. will absolutely work. Although it's moderately painful to set up and keep swapping the remote drives around.

Or you could join the 21st century and backup online, like everybody else does. Unless you're still on dialup it genuinely is by far the simplest, least technically complicated, and most reliable way to backup.

[Griffith4ever]

I would, but I have less than 2mb upload bandwidth, plus, I've been let down with online storage too many times now.

Google photos? Spent weeks uploading my library to then have the Picasa app pulled.
Google play music? Spent weeks uploading my library to then have it shut down.
Photobucket ? Same same.

I want a copy of my data I can touch. I can also take my USB disk on hols and have access to all my docs without internet.

I'll look at online backups again one day but I can't see what they offer above what I have currently. I NEED the raid Nas for day to day stuff, so the backup solution is there already.

If I didn't need and have a Nas it would be a bit different perhaps.

[BigTZ4M]

I think in your use case I'd go for one of two solutions (maybe both), using a simple external hard drive and USB stick

Veeam https://www.veeam.com/virtual-machine-backup-solut... is free an a really nice tool that hides the complexity of file history etc. Schedule a periodic job onto an external hard drive you keep unattached when not in use and you'll keep that 100Gb and any changes nice and safe. Will provide some cover against ransomware and accidental deletion. If you elect to use a NAS instead of a USB drive it's also got the benefit of just working in the background when your PC is on so no need to worry about scheduling or remembering to do it.

The downside is that it stores your backups in a format you need the tool to access. It's easy enough to navigate and retrieve your files but it is retrieval and not really 'instant' access in Windows Explorer. For this reason it's probably not that useful to access your files on holiday locally. For that a 256Gb USB stick and freefilesync https://freefilesync.org/ is a nice solution. You can use robocopy, a script or even just Window's explorer to copy things onto a USB stick but once you set up a replication job in FFS it'd be a case of before going on holiday just plug the USB stick in and double click your job and all your most recent copies of your data are on the stick to take away with you.

Neither of the above are terribly robust in terms of backup strategy though. Using a NAS with some redundancy, an off site copy and a proper 3-2-1 strategy is the correct way to go about it but only you know if the cost and hassle of setting it up is worth it. For example I have a parity protected NAS which can suffer two drive failures. I use an rclone script to copy files (with history) up to it, then I also use rclone to take a subset of that and keep it on my unlimited gdrive account in the cloud and for good measure my really important documents are periodically backed up onto an external hard drive which goes in my safe when not in use. It is overkill for many though - I'm just paranoid.

[RizzoTheRat]

Another vote for Synology if you go the NAS route. The suppled software is really easy to use.

I have a 4 bay with pair of 4TB drives using synology's hybrid RAID, which means when it starts to fill up I can bung in another 4TB drive and gain 4TB's of space. PC does a live sync to it so I can access files from the network when the PC is off, laptops do a timed backup to it, and I then backup the NAS to a USB drive every so often and keep that at work. I'm also running Plex on it to stream stuff to my Chromecast.

My main documents folders are also on Dropbox for additional backup and accessibility.

[Derek Smith]

I have a fair bit of memory-intensive data on my desktop. This includes images, video and 3D animation. On top of that, there’s personal data.

I use external HDDs as backup.

I regularly upgrade my HDDs in my desktop, and as I remove them, it put them in caddies. I’ve got 12TB of external storage. I also back up my personal data to the cloud supplied by my ISP, so it is doubly protected.

As I remove HDDs from caddies, I use them for storage of vital data. I have some data going back 10 years or more.

I don’t compress files. No point for me.

The procedure means that an HDD in my desktop is only in there for 30 months at most before being relegated to a caddy. Once in a caddy they live an easy life.

I’ve had two catastrophic failures of HDDs. I’m nervous. So should everyone be.

I transfer data to an external drive both monthly and when I have something that I don’t want to lose.

It’s cheap. It’s flexible. It’s convenient and, for me, it’s reassuring.

[Jessicus]

NAS are expensive and potentially complex things to setup - for a fairly trivial amount of data I'd use two or three external harddrives, one stored offsite as a very low tech disaster recovery setup and just use Windows 10 Backup - going to additional software such as Veaam if necessary. Honestly, for 100Gb of data 3 USB pens would be enough.

Periodically test that you can recover the data if required and you are sorted.

[sjg]

+1 for Synology. For Windows and Macs you can get set up pretty quick and easily with the native backup tools, but they also have good solutions for things like backing up photos off your phone.

If you want extra redundancy, get a couple of external hard disks. Either hook up to the Synology or your PC and do extra backups there. Have one connected, and one somewhere else (shed, car boot, friend/family house, storage unit, doesn't really matter where) then swap them when you can, just in case a disaster takes out both computer and NAS.

[Slowboathome]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

For my situation, it sounds as though Windows 10 backup, and a couple of external USB drives will do the job.

Thanks again.

[weeboot]

Onedrive offers 1Tb of storage and integrates with Win10 very nicely.
That plus some USB storage for offline storage would be fine.

[Chainsaw Rebuild]

Can you sort your internet out to be faster? I ask because I use Backblaze that backs up your files over the net. The it just backs up the changes; so the first backup might take ages but after that you don’t notice it.

You don’t have to do anything once it’s installed, it’s so easy and reliable.