[Closed] Current computer storage/back-up best practice

I use Dropbox at home and at work, it automatically syncs everything to the cloud without me doing anything.

Personally, I only use an SSD drive as a system drive.
Music files are stored on one of the mechanical disks in my PC and are backed up incrementally to an external mechanical drive about once a month.
Pictures and documents are backed up to the cloud, in this case, Amazon Prime space.
Don't really do much video, but would probably go external HDD if I did.

But that's just me, I guess you have to find what's right for you and that will likely differ for lots of folk...

I use Dropbox at home and at work, it automatically syncs everything to the cloud without me doing anything

Can I be in first with sync is not backup? Backup should be one-way (except restore process obvs), automatic, offsite.

Anyway, I like backblaze for fairly cheap and easy cloud backup if that's you're thing. Initial backup can take a while obviously but after that it's incremental.

Everything is synced to google drive for me, back ups taken to a separate drive.

All my stuff is in OneDrive which keeps version history so is more than just a live sync. Personal OneDrive keeps history for 30 days. OneDrive for Business keeps history indefinitely I think but has a limit to the number of versions (500 I think by default but configurable by 365 admin).

That provides off site store. Then I have Windows File History set up to back up to my NAS, and the NAS does a back up to a USB drive.

I use a NAS drive to back up the laptop to and also Carbonite cloud backup.

This is working fine but the HDD in the laptop is nearly full.

Ideally I want everything on a NAS drive, which is backed up to a separate drive plugged in to the back of it and ALSO backed up to the cloud.

At the moment I can't be bothered to sort it.

It's only really photos that I'm particularly worried about.

OneDrive for the whole family. That's 1TB each. Maybe once a year take an archive of family photos. Remember your computer add doesn't need to be as large as OneDrive now as most stuff will stay offline until you need it

For ssd 256 min but 512 is nice, again especially as you can keep most stuff offline

add doesn’t need to be as large as OneDrive now as most stuff will stay offline

Are you saying you don't have a local copy for some of your stuff?

Or just that you keep it on a separate external drive?

I still use the same approach from my IT days. 3-2-1...

https://www.carbonite.com/blog/article/2016/01/what-is-3-2-1-backup

Losing wife's music compositions would be a nightmare, so original on her Mac, backup to mechanical disk in the house, offsite mechanical disk and also cloud.

Are you saying you don’t have a local copy for some of your stuff?

I don't have a local copy but it looks like there is a copy in your file browser.  When you open it it gets downloaded and is then stored on your computer again.  The computer does a good job of deciding what to keep a local copy of but you can also explicitly tell it yourself if you want.  It works rather well

@leffeboy so not really a backup, although MS I'm sure have impressive resilience in their cloud. Worst case if MS went kaput you'd be stuck?

Worst case if MS went kaput you’d be stuck?

I back up OneDrive to a hard drive about once a year in addition to that, but I'm assuming the MS are probably better at looking after backups than I am.  A mix of online and offline is good as if you house burns down with your drives in it you are a bit stuck as well.  My assumption is that there is nothing within a year I couldn't find again now anyway.

but I get your point, it isn't really a backup if OneDrive is the only copy.  I don't know how MS handle it but I don't image that they only have one copy on a single device.  I like the MS solution as permanently connected solutions always have the issue of ransomware slowly encrypting stuff in background and that stuff then getting on to your NAS through your regular backups.  Or worse, I virus getting onto your system and then infecting everything else on your local network including your NAS.  Therefore I like OneDrive as MS protect against ransomware and then I have the yearly thing in case MS lose data

Dropbox would also work for this.  I've recovered data for someone else who was hit by ransomware simply by rebuilding their computer to clean it and then emailing Dropbox to ask them to roll back their data to a previous point in time

Anyway, I like backblaze for fairly cheap and easy cloud backup if that’s you’re thing.

Same here but I'm thinking it could be a problem if you're away for a long time as you have to plug your backed-up drive in every so often. If you're away cycling round the world and you have a power cut at home, you'll lose your backup 🙁

Cloud(I use adobe and dropbox, just as a separation for certain things) + Local external drive is what I do. I pretty much work off the cloud folders(means I can work off imac or pc laptop if needed).

Then external SSD auto backs everything up at 17:05(smart back up(it clones the OS entire), so it only updates the files that have changed, it's fairly quick and if disaster strikes the internal drive, It's just a case of selecting the external drive to boot from.).

Need to check the status of my PC clone, don't really use that as much, so I've forgot where it is! 😆

I've also got time machine running to the old internal spinny drive, just for giggles! 😆

This:

so original on her Mac, backup to mechanical disk in the house, offsite mechanical disk and also cloud.

Redundancy locally then an offsite backup location, that's not cloud.

Syncing everything to onedrive or any other cloud storage isn't a backup solution. OK, if your drive goes pop, it'll be there on the MS servers, and the likelihood of them losing it is slim. However, if you get cryptolockered, or if you accidentally delete a folder, guess what happens to all your data that's automatically synced to the cloud? It gets encrypted/deleted too, bye bye data.

Simplest solution for the OP would be a NAS with a RAID array (RAID 1 or 5). Then an offsite backup, which might be an external drive that the data is copied to/updated once a week, then stored at someone else's house.

The RAID array sorts the local redundancy in the event of a drive failure, and the external off site drive prevents against any big losses, due to fire/flood/crypto attack/deletion (although regular nightly backups to offsite would be best for file deletion protection).

Turn on file history too, as that is a nice easy to protect against accidentally saving over a file.

I have my laptop backing-up (via timemachine) wireless to my Synology NAS (4 bay RAID). Have had cause to use the backed-up image a few times and it works perfectly.

Backing up the NAS (which holds all my music, movies and TV shows) is a bit difficult. I have been periodically backing it up to a bunch of external HDDs - but I tend to do it rather infrequently as it's a bit of a ball ache.

We are getting fibre broadband sometime in the next few weeks, so I will start using Backblaze cloud backup for my NAS instead of my heath-robinson collection of old HDDs. They seem to be competitive on price, and have an app that runs directly on the NAS to manage the backups.

I have a batch file that copies any changed files to a USB daily. It disconnects the USB until the next backup, as a precaution against cryptlockers. Then I have a hard disk, stored in a separate building, with an image of the OS/programme drive, and a copy of the data (the last 2 or 3 of each, depending on importance). I should think about using the cloud but don't have a lot of confidence in it.

Reading with interest - I have just purchased a Synology NAS after years of copying to a external HD every few months. Still working out how best to set it up.