Best backup method for home personal/home business files?

[Rusty]

First option: Continue using RAID1 as currently set up. This results in 2 volumes of 2 drives each. Volume 1 is Engineering Business sync/archive, while volume 2 is Personal sync/archive, and I'd probably point full-PC backups to Volume 2 as well.

Personally, I would use this method over the second one, because if this happens:

Will one allow for easier drive replacement than the other if a drive does fail?

In that case, you will still have access to your data and be able to rebuild with no problems. Better then to have a single drive as a single volume. For that scenario, you will definitely need a separate backup device. Also having a backup destination for your data on the same device (enclosure) is not really a backup, is it?

 

[jeyare]

Rusty: kk
cost driven vs. safe driven provides different approach to meet an expectations. Every kind of experiences "should" move us to forward. Sometime it hurts.
It is like - any SUV can replace pure off-roads in dirty/muddy forest or sandy track. But people trust, that 4x4 in the SUV is same as locked centre diff in off-roads, and so on. Till first bad experience.
Everyone from us who has an experience with data engineering an data restoration knows, that it can take pretty long time. Then we can invest small part of our budget to backups, prevents our nervous breakdown .

We can't push the people to adopt our experiences, just advice them.
Thanks gents for this forum, because the official Syno forum is pretty bad. I found here few inspirations.

 

[Rusty]

@jeyare I agree. My book is better to double down than to risk it. But again we all have our experiences and budget that will allow and result in specific scenarios.

Thanks, gents for this forum, because the official Syno forum is pretty bad. I found here a few inspirations.

It's great to have active people here. We are sure that we will all benefit from a structured board that we can use as a valuable resource.

 

[fredbert]

We can't push the people to adopt our experiences, just advice them.

Awareness. Without this then making the right choice is hit or miss.

For backup (and security, for that matter) it is analogous to insurance: how much do you want to pay vs how painful if there's not enough. And the only person that can decide how much is enough is the the person who's data it is ... provided they can make an informed decision.

For certain: some backup is significantly better than no backup!

@NAS Newbie I don't know how much critical data you have (irreplaceable family photos; work files) but you might consider using the Synology C2 Backup for off-site backup if the dataset is small enough (Plan 1, <1TB live data, includes daily versions for 30 days; Plan 2, >1TB live and versioned data). I use it for photos etc. and can survive if everything else on local backup is lost though it would be painful. If you do have a very small uplink speed (like my 6Mbps) then it can swamp it and take a long time but there are bandwidth settings in DSM and SRM that can be applied to keep your family happy.

 

[Rusty]

Personally, I use C2 as well as my 3rd party "glacier" backup destination. Haven't had the need to restore yet but have tested it a few time and there were no problems.

 

[Telos]

1. My understanding was that this gave me essentially 2 backup versioned copies of the working data via the 2 drives combined thru raid 1 into volume 1.

You delete file1 from the PC. Synced... file1 is deleted from the NAS (mirror deletion). How is this backup?

... or the file1 gets corrupted on the PC... Now your "backup" syncs the corrupted file1 to the NAS.
... ransomware...
OK?

 

[Telos]

Personally, I use C2 as well as my 3rd party "glacier" backup destination. Haven't had the need to restore yet but have tested it a few time and there were no problems.

I use B2. So that rules out Hyper Backup. So one-way Cloud Sync (w/versioning) or Duplicati (under active development) are my primary solutions. I've also used Cyberduck, but that requires an intermediary PC.

Another option is Syncovery (not free). I am really pleased with the Windows version, but their Syno version is command line, which I tire of ... and have not used since its beta.

 

[NAS Newbie]

Awareness. Without this then making the right choice is hit or miss.

For backup (and security, for that matter) it is analogous to insurance: how much do you want to pay vs how painful if there's not enough. And the only person that can decide how much is enough is the the person who's data it is ... provided they can make an informed decision.

For certain: some backup is significantly better than no backup!

@NAS Newbie I don't know how much critical data you have (irreplaceable family photos; work files) but you might consider using the Synology C2 Backup for off-site backup if the dataset is small enough (Plan 1, <1TB live data, includes daily versions for 30 days; Plan 2, >1TB live and versioned data). I use it for photos etc. and can survive if everything else on local backup is lost though it would be painful. If you do have a very small uplink speed (like my 6Mbps) then it can swamp it and take a long time but there are bandwidth settings in DSM and SRM that can be applied to keep your family happy.

I just ran another speed test, and it says I have 0.97Mbps upload, hence why I'm not all that keen on cloud backups right now. Internet provider says I'm already maxed out on what they can squeeze through the pipe for me. I live in the country, and I have fiber running in the ditch next to my road, but not up to my house 30 feet away. Supposedly they're going to hook it up sometime this summer, but I've heard the same thing the last 2 summers. I'm working on redoing my folder and drive structure to place all the data on one raid1 volume and then backup that data to the second raid1 volume. That'll have to do for now. Thanks for everyone's advice.

 

[WST16]

I have fiber running in the ditch next to my road, but not up to my house 30 feet away.

Move your house to it. it’s so close :p
I’d be sleeping in the ditch with all my devices if it was me