What is the best way of saving/back up personal files?

[IBIubbleTea]

I have quite a bit of family pictures, videos and such and I was wondering what's the best way of backing them up forever if possible and secure? Cloud? Saving them on multiple hard drives? External hard drives?

 

Thanks.

[Polyvalent]

externals or a fileserver.

[MegaDave91]

Multiple harddrives or external....doesn't really matter as long as you have redundancy.

[Geekazoid]

I have quite a bit of family pictures, videos and such and I was wondering what's the best way of backing them up forever if possible and secure? Cloud? Saving them on multiple hard drives? External hard drives?

Thanks.

You could always buy a NAS if you have the cash. Then you can store several HDDs and configured it with RAID so that you'd always have a backup incase one HDD failed.

[GloriousPain]

Archive it to a large HDD (I suggest SG Barracuda, or WD Red or Green for this purpose) then Bank deposit box is probably the best method...

[Captain_WD]

I have quite a bit of family pictures, videos and such and I was wondering what's the best way of backing them up forever if possible and secure? Cloud? Saving them on multiple hard drives? External hard drives?

 

Thanks.

 

Hey there ,

 

You might find this topic useful: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/211267-best-way-to-store-small-amounts-of-data-for-a-long-time/

Otherwise, I would recommend having more than one backup of your important data like photos and videos. 

As @Geekazoid pointed out, a NAS is a great solution for backing up data from multiple devices, but RAID only offers redundancy to that NAS and would not keep your data in case the whole NAS fails (that's what multiple external backups are for).

 

Hope this helps,

 

Captain_WD.

[alpenwasser]

My personal philosphy is that backing up your data will be

a compromise between what you can and are willing to afford

and what it takes to get you to sleep without worrying about

your data. The more important your data is, the more serious

your backup plan tends to be for you to be able to sleep at

night, i.e. the more money you'll usually be willing to invest.

But, any backup plan, regardless of its sophistication, can be

brought to its knees (although it is entirely possible to have

backup plans for which the chances of that happening are

astronomically low). So to me it's less about "What's the best

backup plan?" (because the answer to that question is simply

"The one which doesn't fail." ), but more about how much

money and effort are you willing and able to invest in your

solution.

Uploading your data to the cloud is a great solution when it

comes to hardware and system failures, at least if you pick

a competent cloud provider. A professional data center is

far less likely to lose your data than any solution you'll

likely implement at home. The primary concerns for me with

that are cost and possible privacy issues (although the latter

can be managed with some good encryption). And naturally,

if you don't have an internet connection or cannot access

the cloud for another reason, it won't do you much good

either. So I would never rely exclusively on the cloud, but

as one element in a multi-tiered backup strategy, it can

be a valid option I'd say.

EDIT: Of course, there's also the question of whether or not

you can rely on your cloud provider still being around in

the years to come, whether they go bust, or fall victim to

some economic or political shenanigans. Another reason for

it only being part of a multi-tiered strategy, not your

exclusive backup solution.

/EDIT

My personal backup plan at the moment looks like this:

Tier 1 data (the really important stuff) I have on our

home server, and on another machine. I run RAID6 (well,

RAIDZ2) on the server to maintain availability (although,

RAID is not backup in and of itself), and have the data

stored on a bunch of drives (non-RAID) on another machine.

Once I have the funds available, I will in a third layer

get one or more external drives, which I will periodically

sync and then store in another location than our apartment.

That way, if something happens which takes out both our

server and the backup PC (fire, break-in, w/e), I still

have a copy of my data in a safe place elsewhere.

Data of medium importance I have on the server and the

backup machine, but there won't be any external drives

for it.

And lastly, the stuff which I can afford to lose is just

stored on the server.

If availability of your data is not as important as it

is for me (so, if it's more about archiving and less

about having the data quickly accessible), I would

probably recommend a NAS at your home and either just

one or more external drives (or a second NAS, depending

on budget) which you keep in a safe place somewhere else.

Alternatively to the external drives, you could also go

with the cloud.

IMHO It's less about "Which approach is the best?" and more

about "What approach fits my needs most closely?", and

that's a rather personal decision which we can't answer

for you in the end.

Edited September 15, 2014 by alpenwasser