Backing up: NAS vs USB 3?

samion · 16 Oct 2012 at 22:41

Hi I'm thinking of buying a NAS. I originally thought I'd do RAID1 but researching it I decided as a backup it's best to do separate backups properly, so now I'm thinking... Is it better to have some HDDs on a NAS as backup, which will therefore happen via the network (part wireless, part Ethernet). OR is it better to put separate USB 3 external hard drives into my pc and laptop and do it that way? I suspect USB 3 is faster than network but network seems so easy as im sure it can be done automatically every now and then. I'll have about 4TB of stuff to backup plus one 3TB storage drive on the NAS.

I'm a bit lost with all of this. Any help would be much appreciated!

Sasahara · 17 Oct 2012 at 11:09

NAS is good for having scheduled incremental backups, but is no substitute for an off-line backup.

BluSky · 17 Oct 2012 at 11:13

Whether USB 3 is faster or not will depend on A: the drives you are using, and B: the speed of your network. NAS drives in a raid 1 configuation would be my preference, but either solution is fine. Really you should be backing up to more than one place though.

samion · 17 Oct 2012 at 16:40

Sasahara said:
NAS is good for having scheduled incremental backups, but is no substitute for an off-line backup.

I hadn't thought of incremental. A good idea! I need to make sure my nas will support that!

samion · 17 Oct 2012 at 16:43

BluSky said:
Whether USB 3 is faster or not will depend on A: the drives you are using, and B: the speed of your network. NAS drives in a raid 1 configuation would be my preference, but either solution is fine. Really you should be backing up to more than one place though.

Oh. Drives would be the cheaper 3tb drives 7200 rpm but the cheaper end of the scale. Network? I don't know really. Whatever is normal. It will be a VM superhub and normal Ethernet and wireless for some devices.

I've never backed in my life and I've lost two hard drives to failure so any backup is a step up for me

Credo · 17 Oct 2012 at 16:58

Sasahara said:
NAS is good for having scheduled incremental backups, but is no substitute for an off-line backup.

What do you define as 'offline'? The NAS is physically separate from the PC that is being backed up, and if it uses RAID 1 then that's another level of data safety. A NAS doesn't have to be limited to it's associated backup app, you can still stick a windows image on one, run Robocopy to it, etc, and benefit from the additional redundancy of RAID 1. The Synology NAS' OCUK stock seem to do everything you could ask for in a SOHO application, I'll be getting the DS213 AIR as soon as funds allow. I suggest the OP looks at Robocopy if he doesn't want to use a NAS and it's software for backing up, you can do pretty much anything in terms of what is backed up and once scripted it's very easy...
As BluSky says, the more places you have your data the better, my photos are in three places at any one time...