Home Backup Strategy Ideas

[Me109]

Hello all, first post, hopefully this forum is appropriate but I apologize in advance if it isn't (I think it's borderline - there's a lot of domain knowledge here).

I'd like to enhance my backup strategy with the inclusion of better automated on-site backup and the addition of an offsite backup appliance (~1TB of backup data). My rationale for posting here is I'm not sure whether the old NAS I have (Netgear ReadyNAS Duo - Sparc) can be worked in to my plan, or whether I am better off updating to something newer.

I have 3 clients; MacBook1, MacBook2, and WHS2011. Both MacBooks backup locally to individual external USB drives using Time Machine, each USB drive is also partitioned to include a bootable image. MacBook1 also uses BTSync to copy sensitive files to the WHS, I'll do the same for MacBook2 soon.

WHS backs up its sensitive files (inc. MB1's backup files) daily using Windows Backup to an external drive via eSATA. Folder duplication is enabled on the WHS to provide a RAID-ish defense against drive failure.

What I am considering doing is dropping the Windows Backup as isn't very convenient (need to manually age out backups), and using the NAS as the WHS on-site backup target via Second Copy or scheduled SyncToy echoes, which gains me RAID at this layer as well. Then adding a new NAS offsite to do a NAS to NAS backup.

Alternatively, I could stick with the eSATA external drive (still w/o Windows Backup) and move the NAS off-site, but I am uncertain how to target that as the backup destination within the ReadyNAS OS. Ideally I'd like to use BTSync there as well, but the ReadyNAS Duo Sparc doesn't support it.

Any ideas? Overly complicated? Thanks, I'm open to criticism and ideas, and hopefully can enhance my backup strategy and reclaim the unused NAS to save some money.

 

[stevech]

I use Synology but this may be useful...

• NAS not open to the Internet as a rule. Too risky. Blocked by having no port-forwarding in the router, no UPnP.
  
• USB3 2TB drive receives daily automated delta backup of important folders on the NAS. This 2.5 in. drive is out of sight of thieves. NAS utility does daily backups other than Time Backup.
  
• 32GB SD card in NAS gets daily backup of VIP folders in NAS
  
• NAS has two drives. No RAID - RAID is not a backup. Biggest data loss risks are not drive failures and that is all that RAID helps with. If you have 4+ drives (more drives, more failures). Two drives, Two volumes. Protects from file system corruption as each volume is a separate file system.
  
• NAS utility for Time Backup runs daily. It creates file version archive on volume 2 for selected folders on volume 1. Has saved my buns many times when I hose up a file and need an older version. I go back 6 months. This consumes about 1.2TB on the 2TB drive that is volume 2.
  
• Off site backup - I have only 5Mbps upstream cable modem so this is too slow for "cloud" backup of 10's of GB. Using Adrive or Opendrive, there is an option to use rsync in the NAS for backups. But not at 5Mbps!
  
• I use $25/year Adrive for uploaded backups - but only stuff I will selectively share via password access. Like my clients and family photos to friends/family. I used to use OpenDrive but Adrive is less costly. I've tried 6 others.
  
• Acronis True Image ($30 sale) for PC boot disk imaging with destination = NAS. I do this twice a month. Has saved me 3 times after a virus snuck in. Been using it for 10 years. The UI improves each year.
  
• I make a habit of not storing much data on PC disks, esp. sensitive info. Store it on NAS. Hard habit to break.
  
• On PCs, I use Centered Systems' SecondCopy to automatically copy to the NAS files that are on the PC because they are big, frequently used, numerous and thus too slow via NAS and gigE.
  
• I use free SafeHouse software to keep a super fast to open encrypted virtual disk (1GB) for my financial and personal info. That gets daily backups to several media.
  
• Lastly, I have a 64GB tiny thumb drive on my key chain with all VIP folders and the SafeHouse disk.

===
3-2-1 backup concept!

Long winded. This question gets asked often here so I'll try to link to this in the future.

Steve

 

[mdgm]

I would upgrade to something newer. The Duo is a great NAS but it's a very old model. While the Duo was released in early 2008, It's the 2-bay version of a product released 9 years ago. Rsync performance will be bottlenecked by the CPU. Also as you pointed out you can't run your preferred app BTSync on it.

If you're looking for a new ReadyNAS I'd look at e.g. the ReadyNAS 312.

 

[AdvHomeServer]

I use Synology but this may be useful...

• NAS not open to the Internet as a rule. Too risky. Blocked by having no port-forwarding in the router, no UPnP.
  
• USB3 2TB drive receives daily automated delta backup of important folders on the NAS. This 2.5 in. drive is out of sight of thieves. NAS utility does daily backups other than Time Backup.
  
• 32GB SD card in NAS gets daily backup of VIP folders in NAS
  
• NAS has two drives. No RAID - RAID is not a backup. Biggest data loss risks are not drive failures and that is all that RAID helps with. If you have 4+ drives (more drives, more failures). Two drives, Two volumes. Protects from file system corruption as each volume is a separate file system.
  
• NAS utility for Time Backup runs daily. It creates file version archive on volume 2 for selected folders on volume 1. Has saved my buns many times when I hose up a file and need an older version. I go back 6 months. This consumes about 1.2TB on the 2TB drive that is volume 2.
  
• Off site backup - I have only 5Mbps upstream cable modem so this is too slow for "cloud" backup of 10's of GB. Using Adrive or Opendrive, there is an option to use rsync in the NAS for backups. But not at 5Mbps!
  
• I use $25/year Adrive for uploaded backups - but only stuff I will selectively share via password access. Like my clients and family photos to friends/family. I used to use OpenDrive but Adrive is less costly. I've tried 6 others.
  
• Acronis True Image ($30 sale) for PC boot disk imaging with destination = NAS. I do this twice a month. Has saved me 3 times after a virus snuck in. Been using it for 10 years. The UI improves each year.
  
• I make a habit of not storing much data on PC disks, esp. sensitive info. Store it on NAS. Hard habit to break.
  
• On PCs, I use Centered Systems' SecondCopy to automatically copy to the NAS files that are on the PC because they are big, frequently used, numerous and thus too slow via NAS and gigE.
  
• I use free SafeHouse software to keep a super fast to open encrypted virtual disk (1GB) for my financial and personal info. That gets daily backups to several media.
  
• Lastly, I have a 64GB tiny thumb drive on my key chain with all VIP folders and the SafeHouse disk.

===
3-2-1 backup concept!

Long winded. This question gets asked often here so I'll try to link to this in the future.

Steve

Nice, practical and well thought out.

 

[coxhaus]

If you want to drop Microsoft backup but still backup drives I would look at robocopy /mir option. You can create a batch job which will sync drives. I have used this before and it works well. You can also create a chron job to schedule automatic backups.