Backup your Data

hi there,

from time to time you can read post about members loosing their data. i remember that one forum member lost his data after fire broke out and his laptop got burned another member laptop got stolen and so on. few weeks ago i almost lost all data on my pc at work when the IT team started an encryption process on my hd. the pc turned off while the process and here the party started. it is not related to my coding projects at home but still loosing all data is really terrifying. after it happens i ordered a NAS so i can backup all my data. including 2x 4tb hd. i am really happy with this NAS. it is fast and i can install many apps (web servers) on it like streaming web app, nginx, ubuntu, etc...

i really recommend anyone to get a NAS and backup your Data. it is not worth to loose all you hard work for only few 100's bucks.

this is the one i bought: link
there is also very good NAS by Synology but they are a little bit more expensive. Ugreen offers a reaaly good deal.

Not just a NAS, make sure you have remote too eg backup to the cloud. On Synology you can replicate to cloud storage with one of the plugins.

ilan said:

this is the one i bought: link
there is also very good NAS by Synology but they are a little bit more expensive. Ugreen offers a reaaly good deal.

Click to expand...

Yup all well and good - for those of us who don't have a good currency exchange rate in our favour, there are a number of open source NAS OS forms available. I had to use one in my old office because I could persuade the Money to buy hardware but not hardware and software in one bundle. It worked brilliantly. Which, of course, is still the problem for many - cost of a chassis case with multiple HDDs - maybe in the "back rooms" there are some collections of old cases and drives??? BYO.

Much more important than the hardware is the backup software and the backup strategy.
I back up all my data to NAS storage (Buffalo LinkStation) from time to time.
I create an image of my PC hard disk every week with the software “EaseUS Todo Backup” and save it on an external fast USB hard disk.
Every day, when the PC is switched off, the “EaseUS Todo Backup” software incrementally backs up certain data to the external fast USB hard disk.
So I always have all my important data in 3 places: PC, NAS and USB hard disk.

I was searching for backup strategies and I bumped up on the 3-2-1 strategy. That is:

In order to make sure you have a backup
a) 3 copies at least - You must have 3 copies of your data
b) 2 copies of them in different media - It speaks for itself.
c) 1 copy of them at least off-site. This does not include Dropbox or Google Drive if you have limited time to retrieve a file from history In case of ransomware that will hit also the corresponding folders.

Also always try a restore before disaster hits.

Everything listed here is correct. There is one aspect that I find very important. The backup should start automatically. Ideally, this would be when the computer is shut down. But who wants to wait until the backup run has finished so that the computer switches off? You could just as well start a backup at startup. However, this must not interfere too much with the start-up process or the work that needs to be done on the PC.
The problem often is that you have not manually triggered the creation of a backup when you need it a short time later.

As a rule, large amounts of data are also not necessarily manageable. I published my solution for Windows computers here in the forum years ago. In principle, it is sufficient to back up the project folders. I am using a simple batch file that executes ROBOCOPY commands one after the other and always writes a backup to an SD card when Windows is started. A backup strategy that is quick to implement and offers sufficient protection for the most common disasters. Of course, it does not protect against all eventualities and naturally requires more time to create the programme environment. But the source code is backed up, that's what it's all about. Sure, I don't remove the SD card from the computer every time. Only cloud solutions protect against fire and other forces of nature. You can expand the principle (encrypting the SD-data, load it up to OneDrive for example...)

rabbitBUSH said:

Yup all well and good - for those of us who don't have a good currency exchange rate in our favour, there are a number of open source NAS OS forms available. I had to use one in my old office because I could persuade the Money to buy hardware but not hardware and software in one bundle. It worked brilliantly. Which, of course, is still the problem for many - cost of a chassis case with multiple HDDs - maybe in the "back rooms" there are some collections of old cases and drives??? BYO.

Click to expand...

I recently repurposed a 10 year old NUC as a NAS using Open Media Vault. Works great. Mini PCs are great for this.