Solution to back ups... NAS? PC as a NAS?

Gangster

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Hi all,

Wondering what my best options are to get all of my devices back up on a regular basis. At the moment I have a combination of drives that I update with new photos/vids/data but have to spend a day doing it every few months.

I want a solution which backs up on a regular basis. I have been looking at getting a NAS - I am looking at Synology. I am also looking to upgrade my main PC, so was wondering if I could use that as my NAS... however I would like an 'easy' interface and for it to just work. I don't have the time these days to be tinkering much.

Is there a solution which can backup iPhone, iPads, PC (entire pc image), PC folders etc?

I'd like to be able to regularly use this data, and not worry about drive failure as such. I have been reading on Synology with a 4 bay... where 3/4 hard drives are available to use and 1 is used to help if 1 drive fails... I am thinking of going over the top and maybe having 2 drives to use and 2 drives to 'fail'... does this exist?

I am looking right now, thought I'd put this thread here just in case someone can chip in. I don't have a massive budget, the lower the cost the better but I do want to have my mind at ease with it all. I also want it secure (I've seen synology has username etc access, and can install anti-virus etc scanners?) Being on the network I would want it as secure as possible.

Thanks for reading, hope you can help!
 

GWANGY

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synology is good and can do exactly what you specify BUT they are not inexpensive.. they can do raid5 (3+1) or raid10 (2+2).
Windows can also act as a NAS with similar options.. or there is xpenology which you have to google . very stable on 5.2 release, re-purpose your old PC hardware as a NAS box with synology software. you must make your choice.
 

Big.Wayne

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Gangster said:
Wondering what my best options are to get all of my devices back up on a regular basis.
Click to expand...

Hi Gangster,

The best option in terms of value is just to buy a 3.5" internal hard drive with huge capacity and install that in your PC to use as a dedicated backup drive, then get yourself some good and easy to use backup software and configure it to automatically backup your important data on a regular basis.

You backup your other devices as normal on your computer and in turn this data will be captured as part of your newly configured backup routine.

It's a simple, cost effective and elegant solution.
  • If your System disk dies or is nuked by Russian hackers you can replace the faulty part and restore your OS
  • If your Data disk dies you can replace the faulty part and restore your porn
  • If you accidentally delete some important data you can restore it
  • If your new 3.5" internal huge capacity dedicated backup drive dies you have no data redundancy so will need to slap in a new dedicated backup drive pronto
  • If your computer burst into flames then your ****** unless you have a dedicated external hard drive to hold a copy of your backup somewhere safe
 

Selekt0r

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I have just re-worked my backup solution for my home and family PCs since the departure of Crashplan from the personal backup market. I have a 'server' (well, old PC) running Windows 7 with DrivePool which gives me redundancy in case of drive failure (6 drives of varying sizes totalling 25TB giving my 12.5TB usable space).

Just remember that backing up to anything which can be directly accessed through Windows drives/shares (including external USB drives, NAS etc.) are all at risk of encryption by ransomware if you happen to be unlucky enough to be infected. The only way to be really safe is to backup using a method which uses a different transport mechanism, and versioning to ensure that 'good' versions of files are not overwritten by encrypted ones.

I set up an SSH server on the 'server' (the free version of Bitvise SSH server) and am using Syncovery to backup to it from all the family's PCs and Laptops. This provides full versioning and incremental backups etc. and is safe from ransomware protection as none of the other PCs can directly access the server (but I'm not sure it qualifies under your 'easy interface and just to work' criteria as the syncovery side of things was quite complex to set up).

Finally, I'm still using Crashplan to backup from the 'server' to the cloud and will switch this one machine over to the Crashplan small business plan when the current 'family' subscription expires.
 

GWANGY

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the problem with big waynes plan is the PC needs to be on most/all of the time. The beauty of a NAS is that it is meant to be on all the time. small silent power efficient. A small SYno box would suit, say 2bay eg ds218 . I would accept the higher cost for ease of use and greater versatility. The OS is really easy to use and well debugged.
 

Bluecube

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For Apple devices, iCloud is the simplest way to backup everything. It’s not expensive and is very easy to setup. You could also use iCloud to backup info from your PC though not a disk image.

However, for PC data backup, I’d go for a NAS just to keep the backup separate from the PC. Synology is a good bet as the user interface is powerful yet easy to use. Be aware that keeping a backup at home means if your house burns down then you’ll lose your backup data.
 

Bluecube

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Ballpark you’re looking at about £80 per disk slot. A two disk job starts at about £150. Note that the price excludes actual drives.
 
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Big.Wayne

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Thanks, so single disk Synology is approx £80 + cost of disk and two disk Synology is approx £150 + cost of disks. Does the two disk job offer RAID options also?
 

Bluecube

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There are four, six, eight disk options available. Not sure about RAID options as I think Synology uses their own file system. I’d give the website a look over for that info.
 

Randomface74

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I think a lot of people are doing backups wrong - paying to store things they can easily re-obtain.
- Windows installations
- Movies/TV

Some things are better in the cloud so they can be accessed at different locations:
- Photos
- Music
- Documents

In which case there's very little left to back up.
 

Big.Wayne

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billysielu,

I like to have a backup of my O/S as it does save a lot of time doing a re-install of everything if things go north. A completely set up O/s with all programs, games, tweaks etc installed is worth an hour or two. Movies and TV can be obtained again I suppose but if you have a large backup disk it's easy enough to backup everything. Original user data is most precious so it's crucial to have a lot of redundancy for this. I'm sure there is a good use of Cloud storage but not everyone is happy having their personal data stored on the Internet. I'm also not sure how feasible it is to have a copy of all ones Photos, Music and Documents uploaded as this could be a huge amount of data, think high quality RAW image, .wav audio and 4K master video. . . that's a lot of GB/TB to be shuffling over the internet. As a safeguard against a house burning down I'm sure offsite/cloud storage comes into its own but for an average power user I don't see the appeal. Is there much cost associated with Cloud storage or is it possible to blag a few TB for free?
 
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