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After setting up your self-hosted environment, establishing a solid backup strategy is important. This guide applies to home backup solutions as well.
While the traditional backup rule suggests having three copies on two different media types with one copy offsite, modern storage needs often require a more comprehensive approach. And the number we can debate is not that important.
Critical data needs extra care
First thing first. Take wedding photos or irreplaceable family memories, for instance. Losing these would be devastating, so they deserve a more aggressive backup approach. For my critical data (around 100GB of irreplaceable content), I implement a multi-layered approach:
- Multiple laptops store local copies for immediate access
- Synology Drive keeps it synchronized across my internal network, accessible through apps
- The NAS itself, though using RAID mirroring across two drives, counts as just one backup location
- Four external drives maintain snapshot backups
- A private cloud instance holds another copy of these essential files
This might seem excessive, but for irreplaceable memories or important documents, it’s no cliche’ when I state that there’s no such thing as too many backups.
The rest of our data, while important, follows a more standard backup approach.
- Synology Drive, as primary solution
- One, two, up to three external drives, depending on the type of data and its importance.
Isn’t it too paranoid?
It depends, that’s why for some data you can opt for one backup or even none. But how you decide which is which, is totally up to personal choice.
Can you live with losing that data? Keep it in one place, but do you have important photos, recordings documents on only one device? That’s the opposite of paranoid, and walking on thin air.
We can divide the backup solution using a few layers or concepts:
Primary storage protection
Your primary storage is your NAS or your server. RAID is a hardware redundancy solution, but data protection requires more than just that. Don’t get me wrong, RAID is great, it protects against drive failure however, not against file corruption, accidental deletions, or system-wide issues.
Local backup implementation
Having local backups ensures swift recovery options. You can set up automatic backups of your NAS data to external drives connected directly, or using a schedule.
For larger systems, you should use a backup NAS, preferably located in a separate area within your premises and connected to a different electrical circuit. This sounds too much, and for most people, it probably is.
Choice of storage media matters.
While hard drives are still the most economical choice for large datasets, SSDs excel in durability and speed for data recovery when critical information is involved. Consider using drives from different manufacturers for your primary and backup storage to minimize the risk of batch-related failures.
Offsite storage solutions
Offsite backups protect against location-based disasters. Physical offsite storage involves rotating hard drives to a secure location, such as a safe deposit box or trusted location. This is a bit cringe for most users, that’s why the cloud solution is a good alternative to this.
Cloud storage is particularly useful for critical data that needs regular updating. Encrypted backups to cloud services can complement your physical offsite storage. Certain NAS systems offer convenient cloud backup integration, making the process simpler.
Automation and verification
Backup software like Seagate Backup, Synology Hyper Backup or standard tools like rsync can automate the backup process. These tools can handle scheduling, verification, and notification of backup status.
Recovery procedures
Document your recovery procedures before you need them. Ideally, when setting up a new device, you can at first try to run the recovery procedure, just to understand the entire process.
Accumulated insights
Now, we have the basis.
Here are some key insights that I have learned over the years:
First Step?
Start small. If you don’t have any backup storage, you can purchase one. Something like a Seagate Backup solution with 4TB should now cost under $100.
8 TB or more is even better, but even starting with a 4TB is a great choice, because in the end it can serve as a critical backup solution, if it’s too small for when files just add up.
Files do add up in time
That’s why a good strategy is to always prioritize critical data and non critical. You can back up them both, but not together if it makes sense.
Even family photos add up in time, but mixing them with regular data just asks for a lot of time invested in ‘checking up’ what’s relevant and not to back up.
Sort first, backup later
Though it should have been clear from the start, I created a complex backup system, only to find out that I was backing up a lot of unnecessary data. This forced me to manually delete it from several devices.
However:
Expect mistakes and restarting the process
Experiment, try the software’s backup solution. I’ve dangled with regular backup solutions, one provided by Seagate for example, one provided by NAS Synology, and in the end, tailoring to a more custom solution.
If something went wrong with the desired backup, you can always wipe the drive and try again. (Keeping in mind you don’t delete the only copy).
Always use proper backup SSD or HDD hardware solutions
Any drive will do, even RAID/NAS ones. But opt for devices that have ‘backup’ in their name. Those types of devices are more tailored to this process:
- Backup drives are optimized for sequential read/write operations
- Backup drives may prioritize reliability over speed for small random operations
- Backup drives (like Seagate Backup Plus) are designed for periodic, intensive use
- They’re optimized for long sequential writes followed by long idle periods
- Backup drives often come with built-in backup software, and usually are really good.
- Some models include automatic backup scheduling capabilities
Manual instead of automating backups?
This is again something learned over the years. But generally you don’t need to overcomplicate things, and while automated tasks are pretty nice, especially with working with multiple solutions, you don’t really need to automate everything for the start.
Just the plain exercise of doing a manual backup task from time to time helps to create this healthy posture and and backup mindset. “I shouldn’t keep this on the laptop for so long, and should back it up”.
What else we can back up?
While multimedia does take the most in terms of size and schedule, especially if you have a photography or videography hobby, there are many other things to back-up:
- Documents
- Scans of important paper certificates and cards (Marriage certificates and legal documents, birth certificate, driver’s license)
- Entire device snapshot (phone, laptop)
- Software licenses and product keys
- Passwords and authentication backups (2FA recovery codes)
- Digital collection (music, movies)
Recent example where backup was effective
The 3-2-1 backup rule is important, but it doesn’t show the full picture. Even one manual backup is providing value, and I will showcase my recent near death experience:
I had a photo session for friends, where the main photographer left after the first two hours. So I was at a large family event with people from all over the country, celebrating a child’s first birthday, and taking pictures all day.
In the evening, after taking thousands of pictures, I backed up the photos from the SD card right away.
A quick drag & drop on laptop, synced afterwards the Synology Drive and scheduled a fast backup on a third device.
Now, on the next day I did something really awkward, again as an automated process. At first I went into the city to snap a few photos, and of course I’ve formatted the SD card. Without giving a few thoughts, I later find out, “hmm, my laptop’s full, let’s delete the photos really quick (they were almost 100GB raw + jpeg)”. And of course, sorting through my Synology files, I usually have the “unsorted” folder that I thought I can clean it up really fast. Turns out, I cleaned up the even photos as well. Basically, they were nowhere in sight.
No reasons to panic (But I did)
Just like when you can’t find your wallet or keys in the house, but you know they were safely stored when doing or thinking about other stuff. Even though I panicked a bit, there was no reason to actually panic, because I (did not remember), but I knew I had a backup.
The backup was right there, in the primary backup.
Also another reason not to panic:
Deleting does not mean losing stuff forever
This is a topic for another day, but essentially, you don’t have to worry even if you delete an entire hard drive and do not have a backup. Well, you can worry a bit, but keep in mind, deleting a file doesn’t wipe it clean for the hard drive, it essentially ‘hides’ it or and leaves the space occupied by those files to be rewritten when new files arrive. Those files still exist, and you can recover it completely if you act quickly!
With this said, stay safe & keep your files safe!
Photo by Chris Yates on Unsplash.