System image backup in a cloud backup software vs to an external drive?

[Theminecraftaddict555]

I want to do a full system image of my C drive and back it up somewhere reliably safe. My C drive partition is about 930gb with 480gb used. Would it be better to back the image up to a cloud or external drive? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Both is the best. Both can have issues, hdd is probalby more likely to fail though. HDD is probalby cheaper aswell.

[doommood]

I agree with Electronics Wizardy. In order to securely back up your data, you should have more than one place to store it. Basically, it is recommended to have 3 copies of your data, on two separate/different storage and one of them offsite. This is the 3-2-1 backup strategy https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/3-2-1-backup-strategy-why-your-data-always-survives 

So if you have an option, use a local drive, external drive, and cloud storage.

 

For local, bare-metal backups I suggest you using Veeam Endpoint or Duplicati. Both are free. Both allow you back up data to local, external, and network storage.https://www.veeam.com/windows-endpoint-server-backup-free.html
https://www.duplicati.com/download

To sync backup files made by one of the backup software I've mentioned, use rclone. https://rclone.org/
It is also free. Wasabi and Backblaze B2 ask $5-6 for 1TB of data per month and that might be the cheapest cloud storage. https://wasabi.com/cloud-storage-pricing/#three-info
https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html

 

[Theminecraftaddict555]

21 minutes ago, doommood said:

I agree with Electronics Wizardy. In order to securely back up your data, you should have more than one place to store it. Basically, it is recommended to have 3 copies of your data, on two separate/different storage and one of them offsite. This is the 3-2-1 backup strategy https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/3-2-1-backup-strategy-why-your-data-always-survives 

So if you have an option, use a local drive, external drive, and cloud storage.

 

For local, bare-metal backups I suggest you using Veeam Endpoint or Duplicati. Both are free. Both allow you back up data to local, external, and network storage.https://www.veeam.com/windows-endpoint-server-backup-free.html
https://www.duplicati.com/download

To sync backup files made by one of the backup software I've mentioned, use rclone. https://rclone.org/
It is also free. Wasabi and Backblaze B2 ask $5-6 for 1TB of data per month and that might be the cheapest cloud storage. https://wasabi.com/cloud-storage-pricing/#three-info
https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html

 

Yeah I'm planning to buy a huger external drive to place my windows image on and probably do more than that if I can....

 

Okay now to respond to your other comment you left on my other thread (which is exactly like this one)

 

Except what I'm doing is nowhere near a file sync and a file copy to an external drive seems to be much more different than a file sync...And I don't know how a file copy to an external drive doesn't count as a backup, is it the best tho? not really imo.

 

So veeam allows you to make a whole windows image backup to a cloud for free, correct or is it only for a local or NAS cloud?

 

 

 

 

[doommood]

1 hour ago, Theminecraftaddict555 said:

So veeam allows you to make a whole windows image backup to a cloud for free, correct or is it only for a local or NAS cloud?

Veeam Endpoint allows to make a whole Windows image backup to local, external and NAS storage. It does not feature backups to a cloud. And that is the reason I have suggested to use rclone as a tool that can handle/offload/upload the Veeam backup file's synchronization from your backup storage to the cloud.