Best way to backup multiple terabytes on the cheap?

[Sagpat30]

My PC has roughly 3-4Tb of data and I want to backup all of it, or at least most of it for a decent price, my main concern is hardware failure since my main storage drive is an 8 yo Seagate 1tb drive. 

 

What's the best way for me to go about this without paying out the ass? I'm in the process of budgeting for a new gpu since my GTX 780 Is at the absolute limit running my 3440x1440 monitor so I'd prefer avoiding a $500 solution or whatever else since I need to budget the money for a 2080ti, and at the current prices it's going to be quite the budgeting. 

 

 

I want this to be infrequent storage if that make sense, so I don't need a full server with 10gb network cards and 20tb etc. I just want to backup everything 1-2 times a month automatically, preferably just adding new files instead of replacing and rewriting everything. 

 

 

Edit: I do have a Netgear WiFi extender with USB ports and multiple Cat connections that are open if that helps 

[akialwayz]

2 minutes ago, Sagpat30 said:

My PC has roughly 3-4Tb of data and I want to backup all of it, or at least most of it for a decent price, my main concern is hardware failure since my main storage drive is an 8 yo Seagate 1tb drive. 

 

What's the best way for me to go about this without paying out the ass? I'm in the process of budgeting for a new gpu since my GTX 780 Is at the absolute limit running my 3440x1440 monitor so I'd prefer avoiding a $500 solution or whatever else since I need to budget the money for a 2080ti, and at the current prices it's going to be quite the budgeting. 

Why not compress,encrypt(if files personal) using winrar or 7 zip and upload it to cloud(Google drive or Onedrive).Its a cheap efficient solution

[w1nger1]

If you are considering buying a new HDD, now is a good time, is Cyber Monday.

[Sagpat30]

1 minute ago, akialwayz said:

Why not compress,encrypt(if files personal) using winrar or 7 zip and upload it to cloud(Google drive or Onedrive).Its a cheap efficient solution

I'm not very well versed in the cloud storage services, would I need a business account to accomplish backing up that much data?

[Sagpat30]

3 minutes ago, w1nger1 said:

If you are considering buying a new HDD, now is a good time, is Cyber Monday.

Would buying the biggest hdd I can and just running it like "cold storage" be a good idea? I can deal with manually backing up stuff, and my PC has hotswap HDD bays so I could plug in and disconnect very quickly

 

(It's a Corsair 900D)

[akialwayz]

4 minutes ago, Sagpat30 said:

I'm not very well versed in the cloud storage services, would I need a business account to accomplish backing up that much data?

microsoft gives you 5tb space space with office 365 home(office + 5tb space is a good deal)

3 minutes ago, Sagpat30 said:

Would buying the biggest hdd I can and just running it like "cold storage" be a good idea? I can deal with manually backing up stuff, and my PC has hotswap HDD bays so I could plug in and disconnect very quickly

 

(It's a Corsair 900D)

Only if you take good care of the 'cold storage drive'.I have lost many mechanical drive,just by dropping from few cm on the table.you should take good care if you are going to swap.

[w1nger1]

5 minutes ago, Sagpat30 said:

Would buying the biggest hdd I can and just running it like "cold storage" be a good idea? I can deal with manually backing up stuff, and my PC has hotswap HDD bays so I could plug in and disconnect very quickly

 

(It's a Corsair 900D)

The question is do you really need a cold storage?

[Sagpat30]

8 minutes ago, w1nger1 said:

The question is do you really need a cold storage?

I was thinking about it in terms of running hours and that cold sotrage would last longer, but if that's not the case I might not, is there anything specifically negative about going "cold storage" instead of just permanently putting it in my PC, or connecting to the USB on my Network extender?

[Sagpat30]

13 minutes ago, akialwayz said:

microsoft gives you 5tb space space with office 365 home(office + 5tb space is a good deal)

Only if you take good care of the 'cold storage drive'.I have lost many mechanical drive,just by dropping from few cm on the table.you should take good care if you are going to swap.

I was planning on just poping it out of the hot swap bay half an inch and just leaving it in the PC case since the 900D is massive and won't have a problem with the drive not sitting properly, so i'm not super concerned I'd drop it or anything, but I'll look into office 365 home, 5tb could be a good deal since I generally use office products anyway

[Lady Fitzgerald]

1 hour ago, Sagpat30 said:

Would buying the biggest hdd I can and just running it like "cold storage" be a good idea? I can deal with manually backing up stuff, and my PC has hotswap HDD bays so I could plug in and disconnect very quickly

 

(It's a Corsair 900D)

 

1 hour ago, Sagpat30 said:

I was thinking about it in terms of running hours and that cold sotrage would last longer, but if that's not the case I might not, is there anything specifically negative about going "cold storage" instead of just permanently putting it in my PC, or connecting to the USB on my Network extender?

 

58 minutes ago, Sagpat30 said:

I was planning on just poping it out of the hot swap bay half an inch and just leaving it in the PC case since the 900D is massive and won't have a problem with the drive not sitting properly, so i'm not super concerned I'd drop it or anything, but I'll look into office 365 home, 5tb could be a good deal since I generally use office products anyway

You are on the right track for backups. Using a bare 3.5" internal type HDD in a hot swap bay for backups is an excellent idea. I used to do that until I abandoned HDDs for SSDs.

 

Pulling the drive out when not updating the backup is also an excellent practice. However, i do not recommend just letting set in the hot swap bay even though it has been disconnected by pulling it out a bit. it would be much better to stash it in a drawer or on a shelf somewhere away from the computer.

 

For a drive to be a backup drive, it must be kept disconnected from the computer, powered down, and stored away from the computer except while updating the backup. Budget permitting, I also recommend using two backup drives: one kept onsite and the other one kept offsite. The onsite and offsite backup drives should br swapped as often as is practcal to keep the offsite drive as up to date as possible. 

 

Now is a good time to buy backup drive because of the Cyber Monday sales tomorrow. Again, budget permitting, it would be a good idea to replace the aging drive, maybe even upgrading the capacity.

[Sagpat30]

6 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

 

 

You are on the right track for backups. Using a bare 3.5" internal type HDD in a hot swap bay for backups is an excellent idea. I used to do that until I abandoned HDDs for SSDs.

 

Pulling the drive out when not updating the backup is also an excellent practice. However, i do not recommend just letting set in the hot swap bay even though it has been disconnected by pulling it out a bit. it would be much better to stash it in a drawer or on a shelf somewhere away from the computer.

 

For a drive to be a backup drive, it must be kept disconnected from the computer, powered down, and stored away from the computer except while updating the backup. Budget permitting, I also recommend using two backup drives: one kept onsite and the other one kept offsite. The onsite and offsite backup drives should br swapped as often as is practcal to keep the offsite drive as up to date as possible. 

 

Now is a good time to buy backup drive because of the Cyber Monday sales tomorrow. Again, budget permitting, it would be a good idea to replace the aging drive, maybe even upgrading the capacity.

Thanks, that makes sense, if something happens to my PC I don't want all the backup data going with it.  Maybe I should build some kind of box for it so it's not sitting around in a drawer totally bare

[Lady Fitzgerald]

7 minutes ago, Sagpat30 said:

Thanks, that makes sense, if something happens to my PC I don't want all the backup data going with it.  Maybe I should build some kind of box for it so it's not sitting around in a drawer totally bare

Congratulations! You understand something that most people have problems grasping.

 

Setting totally bare is fine as long as you put them in an antistatic sleeve and they aren't subject to being knocked about. However, you can find fairly inexpensive antistatic sleeves if you shop around.

 

I used to keep my 3.5" HDDs in antistatic sleeves loose in a drawer (I still store my spare and outgrown SSDs that way) but taking them out of the sleeves, then putting them back in was a bit of a pain in the neck so I bought an antistatic foam "egg crate" ("pigeon hole" would be another term) that fit in a large drawer so the drives were cushioned and easily accessable without having to horse around with antistatic sleeves.

 

I couldn't find anything like that for 2.5" drives when I went to all SSDs so I made my own egg crates from high density antistatic foam (that stuff was both expensive and hard to find) that fit inside a small Pelican case I used for transporting the backup SSDs, my safe deposit box, and in a drawer at home.The Pelican case and foam cost me a pretty penny but the convenience was SO worth it.

[porina]

40 minutes ago, Sagpat30 said:

Thanks, that makes sense, if something happens to my PC I don't want all the backup data going with it.  Maybe I should build some kind of box for it so it's not sitting around in a drawer totally bare

Have a look on ebay or similar for older HP Microservers. The older ones with AMD CPUs are very cheap, at least where I am. These are small units with 4 drive bays and could make for a very low cost file server. I used to use one for my cold backups. I'd leave it in a disconencted/unpowered state when not in use. When I want to backup, I connect it up (power and ethernet cables), turn it on, run whatever backups I want, then turn it off and disconnect again. I still do that now, but with a bigger system as I outgrew 4 drive bays.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

1 minute ago, porina said:

Have a look on ebay or similar for older HP Microservers. The older ones with AMD CPUs are very cheap, at least where I am. These are small units with 4 drive bays and could make for a very low cost file server. I used to use one for my cold backups. I'd leave it in a disconencted/unpowered state when not in use. When I want to backup, I connect it up (power and ethernet cables), turn it on, run whatever backups I want, then turn it off and disconnect again. I still do that now, but with a bigger system as I outgrew 4 drive bays.

There are several reasons why I didn't do that (and genrally do not recommend it). One was I would need two (and that would get expensive in a hurry). Another was where would I put it? Where would I put the offsite server? It wouldn't fit in my safe deposit box. Also, lugging servers back and forth between home and my offsite location would be a literal pain due to the added weight.

[porina]

2 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

There are several reasons why I didn't do that (and genrally do not recommend it). One was I would need two (and that would get expensive in a hurry). Another was where would I put it? Where would I put the offsite server? It wouldn't fit in my safe deposit box. Also, lugging servers back and forth between home and my offsite location would be a literal pain due to the added weight.

I was suggesting it only for onsite solution. I don't personally have an offsite solution myself yet so that is still an area of risk for me. The main goal was to have a copy of data off active systems, so would be untouchable by malware outside a small window of risk during backup.

[KuJoe]

I saw some really good deals on Synology NASes for right around $100. Pair it with a cheap HDD, install CloudStation Drive or CloudStation Backup on your PC, then put the NAS in a closet somewhere, now connect to your NAS and enjoy the awesomeness that is Synology.

[Sagpat30]

24 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

I saw some really good deals on Synology NASes for right around $100. Pair it with a cheap HDD, install CloudStation Drive or CloudStation Backup on your PC, then put the NAS in a closet somewhere, now connect to your NAS and enjoy the awesomeness that is Synology.

My biggest fear with these are if the power goes out randomly with no obvious warning like a storm or something. This happened yesterday which is why I'm particularly interested in backing up my stuff right now. 

 

If the Synology loses power is there a chance of corrupting/losing my data? 

[KuJoe]

8 minutes ago, Sagpat30 said:

If the Synology loses power is there a chance of corrupting/losing my data? 

It's always possible, but one of the nice things about Synology is that whenever it doesn't shutdown properly it will do a fsck (Linux version of chkdsk) to see if there's any corruption or bad sectors and try to correct them if it finds them. I've pulled the power on both of my Synology NASes many times (mostly on accident) and never once experience data loss. Although do be warned, the fsck can take a long time to run when you power it back on (but thankfully with the Synology Assistant app you can see what it's doing to make sure it's still running).

[Alim]

One or two external HDDs paired with good backup software should do the job.

Another option is to use cold cloud storage. Storing 4TB data on google cloud would cost 28$ per month. However data retrieval is expensive if you ever need to do so. Also specialised software is required, since mainstream backup software does not support third party clouds.

Also consider backblaze and other similar services.

[AngryBeaver]

For $100 a year you can get 5tb on onedrive or if you own or purchase office 365 home edition this is included for free.

[Alim]

25 minutes ago, AngryBeaver said:

For $100 a year you can get 5tb on onedrive or if you own or purchase office 365 home edition this is included for free.

I believe that onedrive maximum is 1tb per user. 5 accounts would be needed to store 5tb of data

[AngryBeaver]

1 hour ago, Alim said:

I believe that onedrive maximum is 1tb per user. 5 accounts would be needed to store 5tb of data

The one drive for business plan 2 is 120/user for unlimited cloud storing. Not sure if they have a min user requirement though.

[MedievalMatt]

15 hours ago, Sagpat30 said:

I'm not very well versed in the cloud storage services, would I need a business account to accomplish backing up that much data?

I use backblaze for data backups from my server.  Its like $10 a month, maybe 15.  They offer other perks and things too which will be nice if something happens.  Theyll send out a HDD up to 4TB that is yours to keep with your data already on it if you needed.

 

Edit - i have like 20 TB total backed up there, and they havent complained to me about it.

[wONKEyeYEs]

6 hours ago, Sagpat30 said:

My biggest fear with these are if the power goes out randomly with no obvious warning like a storm or something. This happened yesterday which is why I'm particularly interested in backing up my stuff right now. 

 

If the Synology loses power is there a chance of corrupting/losing my data? 

I've been using a UPS for years now.

Even bought a second for my no.2 machine.

Solves a number of problems.

 

As long as it's not writing to disk it shouldn't matter.

And depending on your config it might not even matter then if it's caching it's writes.