Backing Up Data from a Computer

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   eugbugposted 7 years ago

   Backing Up Data from a Computer
   
   Usually I backup photos to CDRs at the end of the year. I do this so infrequently because they are already in 3 places ; On flash memory in the camera, on my computer and in the cloud. The rest of my documents, I backup every so often manually to an external hard drive. Every so often, I also back them up to a DVD and sometimes to the cloud.
   All of this is very tedious, and I could use backup software to automate the process, however are files just lumped into a composited zipped file? If this one file gets corrupted, do all my files become inaccessible? That's why I copy files individually.

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2. 91

   Nathanvilleposted 7 years ago

   Hi Eugene, I agree with you; I prefer to copy files manually rather than being zipped by backup software.
   
   A NAS (Network Attached Storage) might suit your requirements.  A NAS is like an ‘external’ hard drive except it sits on your ‘home’ network rather than being attached directly to your computer; one big advantage being that any computer on your home network has access to it e.g. enabling to share files between computer and laptop across your home network, and it works across different operating systems so that both an iMac and PC can share files with each other via the NAS.
   
   I recently replaced my old NAS with a Synology DS216J 2 Bay Desktop NAS Enclosure.  Having done a lot of research, although the Synology is not as user friendly in setting up as other NAS manufacturer Models, and it may not be as fast as others because it’s CPU and Memory isn’t as high, once setup, it’s a lot more flexible, and is easy to use.   In this respect, if you did to buy a Synology DS216J NAS there are lots of videos on YouTube giving you guidance to setting up and using the NAS.
   
   If you did decide to buy a Synology NAS, you also have to buy the SATA hard drives separately, and in doing so you should buy hard drives that state NAS e.g. two Western Digital 3TB (NAS) hard drives, rather than the cheaper non NAS hard drives. 
   
   In setting up a NAS, the default setting is to RAID the two hard drives together; but if you opt for a manual set up (rather than the recommended automatic setup) you do have the option to RAID each hard drive as a separate ‘Volume’.   Although by keeping the two hard drives as separate volumes they run slower than if RAID together, it does double the storage capacity, and it does reduce the (low) risk of both drives becoming corrupted at the same time.
   
   You might wish to do your own research to make an informed decision, but I am more than pleased with my NAS, and I hope that my info has given you some useful information.

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   1. 95

      eugbugposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks Arthur. I came across an application called "Cobian Backup" which seems to be very comprehensive and allows backup to various locations including the Cloud. It can compress data or save files individually and also do differential backups.

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   2. 91

      Nathanvilleposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      A cool find.

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