The ultimate backup machine!!!!!

[gnaby2]

Hi, recently my computer crashed on me, I managed to get everything back tho, and I am now seriously considering having backups on a hard drive on a nas. My big question is what kind of hardware would I need for SATA III? I know like a raspberry pi, and other cheap computer could be good for that but i'd like to copy my whole drive (1.5 TB) once or twice a week and have 2 backups on it and I don't what it to take 5h since that I play on my computer when I get home from school, and my computer is in my room. Since I don't really want to run the backup overnight I need a way to do it in the day; or I need 1gb/s+ writes and I only have 200 USD to do that. I was planning on buying the WD Red 4TB NAS Hard Disk Drive which is already $150.

 

 What I could also do is setup a wake-up event that is ended by another event. What I mean is my computer is sleeping, it wakes up without turning the screen on, does the backup and after it is completed, it shuts down UNLESS said otherwise. This would allow me to do the backup in the day, but would heat my room like crazy (if the monitor is turned on).

OR, is there a way to only have 1 main backup that happens once a month and do mini backups that happens twice a week that only copies the things that changed over the elapse time. those would be stored in 2/3 different places. You would have the backup, the old mini backup and the new mini backup. Once the new backup has been created either it waits for the one after that to then alter the main backup with he oldest one or it takes the old backup once the new backup has been created and implements it into the main backup.

 

I have no idea if this makes any sense, I am really new to this field and I freak out each time something happens to my computer. I'd really like to find the best way to do this and you guys are my solution.

Please put down how you would do it if you where in my position.

 

Looking forward to all your responses

[Bananasplit_00]

$200 isnt really enough for anything decent when it comes to backup tbh, good hardware for backup and that stuff would be more then $200, just get another drive for your PC and run RAID 1 if you are paranoid lol

[gnaby2]

I see, I am willing to spend more if needed but I'd like to keep it not too expensive

[gio_v]

Option no 1.

Get an external HDD plug it on your pc or on a router with storage support via usb and boom you just build yourself a ghetto NAS for your backups (you can schedule automatic backups on certain folders with many programs that run on windows. I personally use this).

Pros 

Super easy

Super cheap

Cons

Zero redundancy

Zero features

BAD read-write speeds

Option no 2.

Buy yourself at least one of these boxes and some external HDD and you are in business.

Pros

Super easy

Some nice features

Some redundancy

Cons

BAD read-write speeds

Expensive for what it is

Option no. 3

Build something like this and use freenas and raidz2.

Pros

Great features

Super redundancy

Good read/write speeds

The joy of building it yourself

Cons

Very frustrating and complicated process

Pretty expensive

Many hours of your life required

 

I hope I helped

[gnaby2]

The other option could be to just pay for an online service, but that cost money too, or do like a big backup with another synced backup or something. I also messaged Linus ad I hope that he ill be useful to me ad all of the community

[Emmien]

1 hour ago, gnaby2 said:

 I also messaged Linus ad I hope that he ill be useful to me ad all of the community

Don't expect a reply.

 

Does your motherboard have extra SATA ports for Raid?

[brwainer]

BTW, if you have 1.5TB to back up, and you assume a transfer speed of 100MB/s (often larger files read fast and smalled files read much slower, 100MB/s is a decent approximation of average transfer speed), then the transfer would take 4 hours and 10 minutes. It is basically impossible to transfer files off a Sata drive faster. So if you don't want to be running a 4+ hour backup, your only option is RAID 1 - but you have to understand that RAID only protects you against a drive that completely dies, and no other events which a backup would save you from.

[gio_v]

2 hours ago, brwainer said:

BTW, if you have 1.5TB to back up, and you assume a transfer speed of 100MB/s (often larger files read fast and smalled files read much slower, 100MB/s is a decent approximation of average transfer speed), then the transfer would take 4 hours and 10 minutes. It is basically impossible to transfer files off a Sata drive faster.

Sync programs (like Synkron) only copy the changes that you make on your folder, each time you schedule a sync, and not the entire data of your drive so you will only have to wait 4+ hours once...

[gnaby2]

22 minutes ago, gio_v said:

Sync programs (like Synkron) only copy the changes that you make on your folder, each time you schedule a sync, and not the entire data of your drive so you will only have to wait 4+ hours once...

That is very usefull thanks I will look into this

[Mikensan]

You wouldn't write the entire 1.5TB daily, you only need to write the changes or differences. So after the initial transfer your daily backup should be minimal.

 

You could just buy a USB drive and setup a task/cron job to xcopy data from A to B. Or use Microsoft Synctoy which can be automated as well. Honestly a lot of external disks come with software to do this for you. That's the cheapest solution with the least administration. A "better than nothing" approach.

 

I would use google drive for all you really important documents/pictures that don't take up much space. It would be your "long term" storage for the most important data. Maybe do it once a month or once a quarter. There probably exist a way to automate this as well but use caution so you don't end up moving over mass amounts of data lol.

[gnaby2]

8 hours ago, Mikensan said:

You wouldn't write the entire 1.5TB daily, you only need to write the changes or differences. So after the initial transfer your daily backup should be minimal.

 

You could just buy a USB drive and setup a task/cron job to xcopy data from A to B. Or use Microsoft Synctoy which can be automated as well. Honestly a lot of external disks come with software to do this for you. That's the cheapest solution with the least administration. A "better than nothing" approach.

 

I would use google drive for all you really important documents/pictures that don't take up much space. It would be your "long term" storage for the most important data. Maybe do it once a month or once a quarter. There probably exist a way to automate this as well but use caution so you don't end up moving over mass amounts of data lol.

For now I don't really have any files that are important, just tons of apps that just take ages to get installed

[MattJenko]

21 hours ago, gnaby2 said:

For now I don't really have any files that are important, just tons of apps that just take ages to get installed

Then a simple usb disk would be fine for what you're after. As many have said, you copy everything the first time then just incremental changes which take a couple of minutes each time.

 

Some other things to consider:

1. Snapshots - my backup solution (rsnapshot) creates hardlinks to files on the backup drive, only recreating changed files. This way I actually get to keep older versions of files with minimal extra drive space used. I have a weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly snapshot setup, so an old version of a file will hang around for up to a year before being deleted permanently from the backup 

 

2. offsite backups - if you have any really important data, get another drive that you backup to weekly, and leave it in a place that is not your house. For example, mine lives in my desk at work, and I ferry it back and forth to do the weekly backup.

[gnaby2]

I think I got all the answers needed for me, you guys are great, and I will look into what I will do now, thanks a lot!