Back up options other than NAS

I have recently almost filled my 4TB WD external hard drive and realized that nothing on that drive is backed up, so if it goes down, I lose all my images for the last 5 years (most importantly, my kids). NAS seems to be a little bit of overkill for my needs as I am no longer shooting weddings and dealing more with 1-on-1 portrait sessions.

What would be a step down from a NAS system that could work as basically a file backup system?

Probably something like this -

https://www.amazon.com …+drive%2Caps%2C​179&sr=8-6

Heya,

Depends on what level of reassurance you want.

A NAS is just an interface, the hard drives you put in it are no different than the one you're using, as in, a mechanical drive that will fail over time eventually. The NAS is merely an interface to access said drive(s) over a network or locally.

A step down from NAS is literally just plugging a hard drive into your computer, be it SATA or USB or whatever you want.

Backups of backups can become tedious, and also, every mechanical option has a point where it can fail.

There's of course cloud based backups, if you want to go that route. Letting someone else have backups of backups on their own mechanical systems where they maintain it and the hardware instead of you.

Personally I just cycle hard drives. Anything truly critical I have covered via several cloud locations and several physical locations for layers of backup and no automation.

Very best,

external drive.

Consider cleaning up that 4TB, do you need to keep every image? 4TB goes a long way if you keep things neat and tidy.

I gave up trying to use external drives for back-up, it was just a mind boggle checking that important stuff was backed up and not missed. And the one time I would need something from a back-up I would discover it was not on the back-up because it had been x weeks/months since the last back-up and was not there!

For approx 4TB of data, unless you really cannot afford it, I would recommend the use of a NAS. It will work continuosly in the background and apart from the initial set-up it will save you lots of time and hassle.

Another option is to resort to online/cloud back-up, you would need a decent upload speed to support this and there is also the subscription costs to consider.

I used external hard drives in sets of three for:
Current year (x3)
Past years Sports (x3) - now that they are full I'm onto my second set of three
Past Pictures (Family) (x3)
Past Video (x3)

Two drives in each set are in my home office and the third hard drive in each set is kept at my workplace

So my files for the CURRENT year are on an internal hard drive (it includes Sports/Family/Videos for this year)
Each night it is automatically synchronised to an external drive that is always connected to the desktop ... "Files_Backup_#1
I also do a synchronisation to "Files_Backup_#2" at least once per week - usually after a weekend of shooting
I'm pretty disciplined in doing all the manual stuff - it may not suit some-one who is less organised.
Files_Backup_#2 is rotated with the third hard drive "Files_Backup_#3" which is kept at my workplace - usually every two weeks

At the end of each year I copy the year's files to the sets of Past Sports/Family/Video hard drives

So for photos taken in previous years, I have three copies - two onsite and one off-site
For photos/files in the current year I have four copies - three onsite and one offsite (the most I would lose if the house burnt down would be the last two weeks of work)

So at the moment I have 15 external hard drives. Probably wouldn't suit a lot of people but it is something I am used to now. All drives labelled, all cables labelled. Made my own mini hard drive shelves for one set of the hard drives that are connected to the desktop tower - but not powered up. I have this set hooked up to power boards and just turn on THAT hard drive if I want to get a file from a previous year.

I am synchronising software I use keeps the last 5 versions of each file change. Still not as good as true backup software but it suits me.
I'm using Allway Synch Pro but there are a lot of alternatives you could use

Note: I also rotate my memory cards through three sets - so I still have the files from two shoots ago (I shoot sports mainly on weekends, so it means I have the photos from a fortnight ago still on memory cards as well)

shocolite wrote in post #18872789
I gave up trying to use external drives for back-up, it was just a mind boggle checking that important stuff was backed up and not missed. And the one time I would need something from a back-up I would discover it was not on the back-up because it had been x weeks/months since the last back-up and was not there!

For approx 4TB of data, unless you really cannot afford it, I would recommend the use of a NAS. It will work continuosly in the background and apart from the initial set-up it will save you lots of time and hassle.

Another option is to resort to online/cloud back-up, you would need a decent upload speed to support this and there is also the subscription costs to consider.

I've looked at Backblaze. Running their speed test, it would take me about 30 days to upload my current drive with no new work. My upload would be about 130-140gb per day.

How difficult is the initial set up. I've seen some. mixed reviews on the Synology products - some say it's easy, some say it doesn't make sense. That's the only system that has been recommended numerous times by people.

huntersdad wrote in post #18873168
I've looked at Backblaze. Running their speed test, it would take me about 30 days to upload my current drive with no new work. My upload would be about 130-140gb per day.

How difficult is the initial set up. I've seen some. mixed reviews on the Synology products - some say it's easy, some say it doesn't make sense. That's the only system that has been recommended numerous times by people.

Synology was a big deal for me, they have good software solutions.

They provide a DNS, so if you have two boxes at different places, they can back to each other with the internal operating system.... Yes the boxes have their own lightweight OS.

I moved from an older NAS that I had to buy separate DNS, setup FTP, port forwarding, the Synology didn't need any of that.

If I were to setup a NAS at my mom's, I could backup there without worrying about her changing providers, which she has... Fantastic for vacation backups straight to you home cloud. Also compatible with Apps, so you can download without complex ftp setup.

huntersdad wrote in post #18873168
I've looked at Backblaze. Running their speed test, it would take me about 30 days to upload my current drive with no new work. My upload would be about 130-140gb per day.

How difficult is the initial set up. I've seen some. mixed reviews on the Synology products - some say it's easy, some say it doesn't make sense. That's the only system that has been recommended numerous times by people.

I am on my second Synology NAS. The first one was one of the lower end 2-bay NAS with 2x3TB drives. I used it for about 5 years then upgraded because I just found it too slow. I upgraded to a DS716+II which is quite snappy. So if you can afford a slightly better NAS I would recommend it - ie better CPU and RAM. I have also used Zyxel NAS. Overall the Synology is better in my opinion, interface is better and it has a proper standby function whereby the fan powers down. On my Zyxel the fan always remains running at low speed when in standby. To me that is just a way of sucking dust into the enclosure.

If you have 4TB of data you would need probably at least 2 x 6TB drives (perhaps even 8TB - Synology cloud-station requires storage space to run its syncing functions. I *think* something in the order of 50%. So if you were to expand beyond 4TB of base data then I would suggest perhaps 2 x 8TB drives, or look at a 4-bay unit.

I find the Synology software fine to use. Then again I an happy messing around and use Google if I am stuck! If you want to run the NAS just on your home LAN, I personally think its Cloud-station (syncing) software great to use. I have 5 PC's and laptops in my house and all are kept synced and up-to-date. It can be a little trickier if you want external access to the Synology but in the past few years Synology have made this easier with their "Quick Connect" utility. It has a myriad of other functions that I don't use. It is also fully compatible with Apple - I have one I-pad that streams music from the Synology NAS.

To be honest, I would think that you would need better-than-basic PC know-how to set up a NAS for basic LAN use. But if you google anything you don't understand you would get a good idea of what to do. If you can configure a printer to work on a LAN then you are probably half way there!

From my experience I would highly recommend Synology NAS units.

huntersdad wrote in post #18872606
I have recently almost filled my 4TB WD external hard drive and realized that nothing on that drive is backed up, so if it goes down, I lose all my images for the last 5 years (most importantly, my kids). NAS seems to be a little bit of overkill for my needs as I am no longer shooting weddings and dealing more with 1-on-1 portrait sessions.

What would be a step down from a NAS system that could work as basically a file backup system?

Sounds like you need 2 things.
-More storage capacity.
-A back up solution.


A NAS is NOT A BACK UP.
This is an important thing to note.

A NAS is Network Attached Storage and provides:

• Access to files on the storage over a network from multiple devices, i.e. it's a file server
  
• A RAID array for better performance and redundancy (not a back up)
  
• More storage capacity than you can get in the computer
  

• Independent
  
• At least one copy Off Site
  
• At lease one copy Off Line
  

Remember all hard drives fail, the only question is when.

1. Delete the photos / videos / data on your drive that you won't miss, or would never consider printing.
2. Consider bulk converting less important photos to jpeg. I rate photos 3, 4, or 5 start, and often convert the 3* to jpg after processing.
3. Buy an external hard drive, like an 8TB Seagate / WD drive. Get some backup software, there's none I love but CloudBerry is ok. Run a backup, then take the hard drive offsite. Bring it back every week / month to do an incremental backup.
4. Consider Cloud backup of your photos. BackBlaze is as good as any. You only get a 30 day version history.

Here's some extra steps I do:
5. I keep a copy of photos that aren't yet stored offsite in Amazon S3, uploaded using CloudBerry backup. I use it just to copy the files up, I have S3 do encryption, and I turn versioning on.
6. Every six months I convert all my new images to medium jpeg (2000 px Q7) and all my video to 720p and store that in a location on my hard drive. I then sync that location with a different Amazon S3 bucket, storing the data in Glacier Deep Storage class. That costs $1/TB/month, which is crazy cheap given that S3 is extremely durable and reliable. It stores your data in three different data centers. I have 70GB of RAW 1080p video and 286GB of RAW photos, which compresses down to 40GB. That costs me basically nothing to store in S3.
7. I have a second offsite hard drive which I keep somewhere close to my house.

I personally use Restic backup for my incremental, encrypted backups. I've found it reliable. It's command line only. Remember all backups need to be tested - do a full or selective restore every six months. Incremental backups are key - if you get hit by a virus or ransomware this will protect you from data loss.

I may be slightly on the extreme side with backups, but I've never lost data. I do IT consulting for large enterprises, with a focus on AWS Cloud.

I dont use NAS. I would highly recommend getting a G-TECHNOLOGY G-SPEED STUDIO. I have two, and I love them. I have one set up in RAID 5. So if I lose an entire drive (out of 4). I can replace the drive, and be ok. It also gives me much more space than doing raid 1. I also have everything backed up on BACKBLAZE. Its super cheap, and works super good. Its all locally connected via Thunderbolt 2. It has performed flawlessly for me.

Moppie wrote in post #18873823
A NAS is NOT A BACK UP.
This is an important thing to note.

tim wrote in post #18873835
4. Consider Cloud backup of your photos. BackBlaze is as good as any. You only get a 30 day version history.

Two important pieces of advice.

I use a second harddrive as a external backup that I keep off-site and make a sync with the master every few weeks (which is good enough in my case). Additionally, I use Crashplan as my main off-site backup. It is more expensive then backblaze, but has the advantage that it a) has more versioning options and b) you can easily and fast retrieve single files or folders (also older versions that were deleted) from the backup - which turned out to be quite handy several times now.
The Crashplan software does automatically a backup of my main computers HD on the external harddrive and the main computer and the HD is being incrementally backupped to the cloud. Everything is encrypted locally with a local key - although you have to provide the passphrase to retrieve the files.

I use a Drobo -- as an array, it's flexible (you can use different sized drives and as you add/replace drives with bigger capacities, it grows the array seamlessly) and the software allows you to recover the Array if the device itself fails. You can even tell it to use two of the five drives as redundant ones (usually it's one). Every time I come back from a shoot the first thing I do is copy all the pics over to that NAS.

However, as has been pointed out, a NAS is not a backup... this is why I have two Drobos on my Mac Mini, one sits idle all day until 6am, when the Mini performs a scheduled rsync and copies anything changed/added from the main Drobo.

Beyond that, however, about once a month I ZIP up every pic I've ever taken and copy that password-encrypted zip file over to my Dropbox folder (I've a basic 2TB subscription), thus my pics are in the cloud as well (worst case scenario I lose maybe the last month's worth).

Sicily1918 wrote in post #18925943
I use a Drobo -- as an array, it's flexible (you can use different sized drives and as you add/replace drives with bigger capacities, it grows the array seamlessly) and the software allows you to recover the Array if the device itself fails. You can even tell it to use two of the five drives as redundant ones (usually it's one). Every time I come back from a shoot the first thing I do is copy all the pics over to that NAS.

However, as has been pointed out, a NAS is not a backup... this is why I have two Drobos on my Mac Mini, one sits idle all day until 6am, when the Mini performs a scheduled rsync and copies anything changed/added from the main Drobo.

Beyond that, however, about once a month I ZIP up every pic I've ever taken and copy that password-encrypted zip file over to my Dropbox folder (I've a basic 2TB subscription), thus my pics are in the cloud as well (worst case scenario I lose maybe the last month's worth).

Drobo / NAS protects against drive failure. It does protect against fire, theft, malware, etc. One virus can take out both drobos. Your dropbox backup is good, but could be improved.

My opinion is that to call something a backup it needs to be offsite, not able to be deleted easily, and incremental. I use Restic backup to backup to AWS S3, and I have versioning turned on so effectively the data can't be deleted, and the user running the backup has no delete rights.

Dropbox is ok, and has a short version history. If dropbox is mapped from your computer then it's more vulnerable than other options.

I work in enterprise cloud infrastructure design, I do this kind of thing for large businesses. My backup system is largely automated, some manual steps, but I should never lose data.