I need backup/storage help

[thegkevin]

I need help understanding backups. there are simply too many terms everywhere and I am confused. 

I have a gaming PC, I want to ensure I have a backup of the entire PC, (all ssd’s and hdd’s) incase it fails and I can use my backup. 
I simply dont know where to start, 

I want to have it to cloud storage, but apparently many are monthly subscription which do not need my needs, I was looking for something 1 time device purchase and have my backup saved to a cloud, not on my PC as it will take up more space on my storages saving the backups there, unless I am not doing this correctly. I dont know, I am honestly thrown off by how many different third party apps, softwares, subscriptions, 1 time purchase for a device, what software offers this, the other doesnt;

 

I simply want to have a Scheduled Backup, saved to a cloud, 1 time purchase software, that I can access from anywhere. does this exist? what are my options.

 

I have tried urbackupper but it saves backups to your own hdd/storage, so… what if the storage fails, would my backup even work?

Let alone I am having trouble navigating or trying to get anything done on urbackupper, even from watching videos. 
 

This seems to be very complicated, I just want to have a consistent backup incase I lose more oldvideos.

 

[ToboRobot]

How much data are you talking about?

Solutions could range from getting an external hard drive and making regular copies of your data, to more expensive  appliances like NAS.

Don't think any company can reliably offer life of cloud storage, given it has annual costs to keep data.

I started with external HDDs for backups, before eventually wanting a NAS/server for storage. 

[thegkevin]

1 minute ago, ToboRobot said:

How much data are you talking about?

Solutions could range from getting an external hard drive and making regular copies of your data, to more expensive  appliances like NAS.

Don't think any company can reliably offer life of cloud storage, given it has annual costs to keep data.

I started with external HDDs for backups, before eventually wanting a NAS/server for storage. 

2.5 TB Minimum atm for all my games and videos i have saved, as well as windows. I have an extra m.2 2tb I am going to put in for more storage.

So in total 4.5TB’s I want to ensure I have safe always.

[ToboRobot]

5 minutes ago, thegkevin said:

2.5 TB Minimum atm for all my games and videos i have saved, as well as windows. I have an extra m.2 2tb I am going to put in for more storage.

So in total 4.5TB’s I want to ensure I have safe always.

A 8TB external hard drive would work.  Plug it in every so often, back everything up, and then disconnect it and put it in a safe place.

[thegkevin]

21 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

A 8TB external hard drive would work.  Plug it in every so often, back everything up, and then disconnect it and put it in a safe place.

This is what I wanted in the first place, although another forum i posted, someone told me “Why get a external drive? I’d go internal here unless I cant add more drives.”

Someone also stated “I bet he didnt know he needs to have one or two backups, So he needs atleast two drives.”

This just made it more confusing for me at the time. 
So I would just need 1 8TB External HDD to backup everything and unplug it so the data doesnt go anywhere, correct?

 

And I do have more spaces for internal

At the current moment I have 

1 internal m.2 500gb

1 internal ssd 1tb

1 internal hdd 1tb 

I would like to buy a new motherboard(2xM.2), to add a 2tb m.2 Which I have bought already for more storage.

 

 

[ToboRobot]

11 minutes ago, thegkevin said:

This is what I wanted in the first place, although another forum i posted, someone told me “Why get a external drive? I’d go internal here unless I cant add more drives.”

Someone also stated “I bet he didnt know he needs to have one or two backups, So he needs atleast two drives.”

This just made it more confusing for me at the time. 
So I would just need 1 8TB External HDD to backup everything and unplug it so the data doesnt go anywhere, correct?

 

And I do have more spaces for internal

At the current moment I have 

1 internal m.2 500gb

1 internal ssd 1tb

1 internal hdd 1tb 

I would like to buy a new motherboard(2xM.2), to add a 2tb m.2 Which I have bought already for more storage.

 

 

External for a backup also it to sit dormant, so you have a SEPARATE copy of your data should the main copy on your PC.

Having all your data backup on an external drive isn't perfect, but it is better than no backup copy.  But having more copies is better in terms of data resilience.  It just adds cost and complexity, which scale with the amount of data you have.

Yes, one hard drive will allow you to back up your data to one drive.  It can be more complicated, but doesn't need to be.

[thegkevin]

33 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

External for a backup also it to sit dormant, so you have a SEPARATE copy of your data should the main copy on your PC.

Having all your data backup on an external drive isn't perfect, but it is better than no backup copy.  But having more copies is better in terms of data resilience.  It just adds cost and complexity, which scale with the amount of data you have.

Yes, one hard drive will allow you to back up your data to one drive.  It can be more complicated, but doesn't need to be.

Okay thank you, I will be following this video. This is good? or something else you recommend? 

One more question, Should I have it plugged in or unplugged and dormant. 

I am sure I wouldnt even need weekly or even monthly backups

 

only when uploading videos from my sd to pc,

fresh backup of everything, unplug external, And repeat

To ensure I have a backup of everything I want, yes?

 

[BahnStormer]

I would caution against keeping all your backups in a single local hard drive: fire / theft / power spikes could kill that just as easily as your main system if you're unlucky enough to have it plugged in when you get the failure... I say this because I had all of my backups on a RAID5 NAS and lost the whole lot to a power spike at home that took out all the drives, this was despite surge suppressor power adapters. I was just lucky I had all the family photo's on a cloud backup, so mostly just lost my movie jukebox and had to re-rip those DVDs - it was about 15 years ago

 

Work out what you actually NEED to backup and what type of events you are trying to recover from.

 

Brute force "full system imaging" is expensive and a pain the @$$ to keep doing and results in lots of manual effort - you are unlikely to keep those images up to date enough to ever be worth recovering to.

 

You really do NOT need to back up your game install files - yes, it will cost you a little bit of time to download the games and mods again, but think about it.... if you lose all your main hard drives (power spike / fire / any total loss), you will probably not rebuild on identical hardware and would want to re-install windows anyway, so you only need to be able to recover important documents.... not OS install / game files.

 

My personal approach...

 

In a system with:

1Tb M.2 for OS

1Tb M.2 for games drive

8Tb SATA for game recordings and other non-critical storage (some VHDs for emulator drivers, local copies of old game ISO's).... and my OS drive snapshots.

 

I cover for two scenarios:

 

#1 OS drive corruption or a bad Windows patch/update, etc:

I run Macrium Reflect to take a monthly snapshot of my main OS drive and then daily differential backups - these have a snapshop at 3am every day, so I can always roll my OS back. This is stored on my local 8Tb. Keeping 3 months of that history takes <2Tb of local storage.

 

This gives me the ability to roll back to that system status to any point over the last 3 months.

 

Once setup the effort required is ZERO, unless I need to roll it back or replace that 1Tb drive if it fails.

 

I do not backup my 1Tb games drive at all - that's an easy re-download.

 

I do not backup my 8Tb SATA at all - the only things that I'd lose would be some recent game recordings and the functionality that this drive provides (OS drive snapshots), but I'd replace the drive within 48h, if it did fail. 

 

#2 Home burglary / fire / total loss of the system.

For this unlikely scenario I'm just after what I can't replace, so I use Windows backup to have my local documents, etc backed up to a Synology NAS on my local network, which then has a Dropbox Cloudsync. Alternative options are available to do this directly to Microsoft's OneDrive - just be careful what they try to snapshot as they will try to bloat this storage to push you into higher price tiers.

 

Reality is that if I had something where the whole system was trashed, I would not be replacing it with a system that was sufficiently close to the original to use the OS drive snapshots.

 

The cloud-sync could be run as a sync to any cloud storage and a free 15Gb Google drive would be PLENTY for that Documents folder.... and ~$2 a month for 100Gb if you wanted to keep a bit more.

 

I'm sure there are ways to get the same effect that I have without going via a NAS, but then I have several family laptops and PC's that all have the same document backup process, so my solution via the NAS works better for me. 

[ToboRobot]

2 hours ago, thegkevin said:

Okay thank you, I will be following this video. This is good? or something else you recommend? 

One more question, Should I have it plugged in or unplugged and dormant. 

I am sure I wouldnt even need weekly or even monthly backups

 

only when uploading videos from my sd to pc,

fresh backup of everything, unplug external, And repeat

To ensure I have a backup of everything I want, yes?

 

i don't have any personal experience with that but I am sure there are a bunch of ways to get it to work for you with a bit of research and experience.

If it's plugged it, it's easier for an automated backup.  If it's unplugged and dormant (or even in a safe for extra security from theft and fire) that's added protection that power surge or malware won't affect it as it's connected to your computer.

You can manually copy the files you want to backup, or set it up with some sort of software to automate the process. 

 

as BahnStormer said, Having a second copy is a good start but ensuring any critical files you have are also backed up in a way that is safe from the location you are at having a fire/theft.

Different people have different internet connections and bandwidth caps, so think about what you want and NEED to backup.  Critical, irreplaceable data and "linux isos" are different categories when it comes to backup needs.  Everyone needs are different so I am not trying to tell you what to do, but give you information so you can think about what you want and need and come up with your own plan.  And then you can refine and evolve the plan as time goes on and your data collection and access needs change. 

1st Copy is on your Computer
2nd Copy is an external hard drive backup (in case your computer crashes and the data on it is gone)

3rd Copy is a copy of your critical files (or everything budget/use permitting) in the cloud or at someone else's location (this could be another external drive at a family members or friends house, or flash drives in a bank security deposit box) (in case both your computer and backup are gone/fail)

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/