A backup system I'm thinking of, looking for your thoughts

[Speedbird]

Hello,

 

So I have a rather unusual and complex setup of computers. I have 2 homes, and spend equal amounts of time in both of them, and both have their own desktop computers. One has a 750GB SSD+1TB HDD and runs Windows 10 Enterprise, the other has a 500GB SSD only and runs Linux Mint 19. I also have a server, which has 2*1TB drives in RAID 1, with plenty of available space, running Ubuntu 18.04 Server. I also have 2 laptops: an HP Probook 455 G1, running Windows 10 Home and packing a 256GB SSD, and an HP Stream x360, with a 32GB eMMC drive running Linux Mint 19. Right now, even though I store some files in the cloud, I have no system in place for restoring system state should there be a failure.

 

My current situation and some of my thoughts are as follows

• Important documents are stored in either Google Docs or Microsoft OneDrive, but not both at once.
• Photos from my phone are backed up automatically to Google Photos. I've also organised some into albums, for easy access, and have backed up copies of some albums to Microsoft OneDrive. This leads me to my first question: would there be a way to automatically have the copy in OneDrive be updated, should there be changes to the one in Google Photos?
• The first desktop computer, the one with a 750GB SSD and 1TB HDD, has a lot of programs installed, all with their own settings, and setting everything up again from scratch would be quite time-consuming. This is the main computer that I want to back up, all others are second to this. I'm thinking of using Windows System Image Backup to back up the entire contents of the SSD onto the HDD, and to prevent problems should the HDD fail, I'm gonna run File History backups on it. However, I'm not decided yet on where to save them. Should I use an external hard drive (I have old internal drives lying around which I can easily put in a USB enclosure), or use my server for this? If I were to use the server, I would somehow need to upload backups over the internet, as it is on a different network. Are there any such software solutions available, preferably free?
• For other computers, the system state isn't as important, but I would still want to have a File History (or a Linux equivalent) solution set up. Are there any such programs available for Linux?
• If I choose to back up to my server, should I make a backup of the server itself as well? Or is the redundancy from RAID 1 enough?

Any thoughts on this are welcome, and feel free to suggest alternative solutions to mine.

Huge thanks in advance.

[Mr Technician]

5 minutes ago, Speedbird said:

This leads me to my first question: would there be a way to automatically have the copy in OneDrive be updated, should there be changes to the one in Google Photos?

You may be able to sync between Google Photos/Drive and OneDrive with IFTTT though I'm not positive.

5 minutes ago, Speedbird said:

If I choose to back up to my server, should I make a backup of the server itself as well? Or is the redundancy from RAID 1 enough?

That depends. RAID 1 isn't a backup but it is still better than nothing. If you really don't want to lose your data, have a backup as well. If it's just for backing up a system I'd say RAID 1 is fine though, whereas you'd want an additional backup for pictures and such if you weren't already using cloud storage for them.

8 minutes ago, Speedbird said:

If I were to use the server, I would somehow need to upload backups over the internet, as it is on a different network.

Is your server cloud hosted? A local box is probably simpler for what you are trying to do.

[Speedbird]

Just now, ThatFlashCat said:

You may be able to sync between Google Photos/Drive and OneDrive with IFTTT though I'm not positive.

That depends. RAID 1 isn't a backup but it is still better than nothing. If you really don't want to lose your data, have a backup as well. If it's just for backing up a system I'd say RAID 1 is fine though, whereas you'd want an additional backup for pictures and such if you weren't already using cloud storage for them.

Is your server cloud hosted? A local box is probably simpler for what you are trying to do.

Thank you for your suggestions. My server is local hosted, on the same network as the 2nd desktop computer (the one running Linux.) I don't really store anything important on the server alone at the moment, other than movies. I would need uploading over the internet because of the 1st desktop computer, which is in a completely different physical building. I used to have a second server on that network as well, with a site-to-site VPN, however I shut that down because I didn't use it a lot. And I had issues with performance on it anyway.

 

I will probably stick with just RAID 1 then, and I'll look into IFTT. Thanks again!

[Mr Technician]

23 minutes ago, Speedbird said:

I will probably stick with just RAID 1 then, and I'll look into IFTT. Thanks again!

No problem! Let me know how it works out.