Off site backup for home computers

Swa said:
Always ask yourself what it is you want to accomplish. Most people that go for off site backup don't really need it. Hard drives are very resilient against damage. Then ask what are you actually backing up. Software and os can be configured again so simply making a copy on a drive once a year that you chuck under your bed is enough. Stuff you can download again doesn't need backup. Tasks that can be automated like 10 different sizes of photos doesn't need backup, rather backup the originals only. Only for irreplaceable stuff would off site backup really be needed.

If you want to go with Zoolz I can get it between $29.99 and $75 for 1-3TB. Perhaps even cheaper.
Click to expand...
I create large scenery files along with Hi def 4K video and hi def imigary most of my scenery files I create are between 8-64GB and I have hundreds of them. I’m not worried about hard drive failure, if I was I’d keep a external drive, I’m more worried about Theft or major disasters like a fire. Then there are also the smaller things like important documents,my collection of hard to get old music and my collection of software I’ve programmed over the years that I need to keep safe.
I’d prefer to use my own storage solution so that restoring data won’t take to long as I could bring the NAS to my house to redownload everything.
 
So is the problem the backup software to use or the actual NAS/server to use? With your "off-site but close by" requirement surely you've figured out the location of your NAS already: garage, holiday home, friend's house, IS datacentre...?

How often, realistically, will you ever need to recover files from your backup? Is it more important to easily recover the data after you've been robbed blind or your house was expropriated by weather or is it more important to have an easy and reliable solution even if the backup takes a day or two to recover?
 
Hamster said:
So is the problem the backup software to use or the actual NAS/server to use? With your "off-site but close by" requirement surely you've figured out the location of your NAS already: garage, holiday home, friend's house, IS datacentre...?

How often, realistically, will you ever need to recover files from your backup? Is it more important to easily recover the data after you've been robbed blind or your house was expropriated by weather or is it more important to have an easy and reliable solution even if the backup takes a day or two to recover?
Click to expand...
It’s a combination of both if you do the math 2TB of data on a 20Mbps line would take more than 200 Hours to download that’s more than a week.
Hence my concept of placing it at a friends house close by.
The problem is both the hardware and the software.
 
basil katakuzinos said:
The problem is both the hardware and the software.
Click to expand...

I can't tell you about hardware but I would imagine a couple of decent eco friendly HDD in some form of redundant RAID configuration behind a UPS will do the trick. "Auto shutdown" would be nice. I would have to Google it myself and check a couple of reviews.

The software though: Borg, as mentioned above.

EDIT:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/69lm87

Why not set up a small VPS on digital ocean or on a VM at home at test it with a couple of files to see if it works for you?
 
basil katakuzinos said:
I create large scenery files along with Hi def 4K video and hi def imigary most of my scenery files I create are between 8-64GB and I have hundreds of them. I’m not worried about hard drive failure, if I was I’d keep a external drive, I’m more worried about Theft or major disasters like a fire. Then there are also the smaller things like important documents,my collection of hard to get old music and my collection of software I’ve programmed over the years that I need to keep safe.
I’d prefer to use my own storage solution so that restoring data won’t take to long as I could bring the NAS to my house to redownload everything.
Click to expand...
basil katakuzinos said:
It’s a combination of both if you do the math 2TB of data on a 20Mbps line would take more than 200 Hours to download that’s more than a week.
Hence my concept of placing it at a friends house close by.
The problem is both the hardware and the software.
Click to expand...
The easiest solution is probably to copy over to an external drive and place at a second property. A 2TB drive takes me ~6 hours to backup. Store anything you create online as needed and once filled up use something like WinHex to make a copy of the drive then delete the online backup.
 
https://wasabi.com/pricing/
This is at $5/TB a month., so $10 currently, pay per gig ($0.0049/gig) with no egress/api call charges, so transferring the data is free.
End up being $120/year (about R1725 currently).

At that price going for OneDrive might be better if they allow you to combine the 1x5TB total storage, it's a 100 dollars a year. You'd also get the office suite and one drive integrates better into windows.
(https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-za/plans/ R1200 per year)
EDIT: so going one drive route you'd need to split into files into 5 users and sync like that. Business Plan 2 for R130/month can be provisioned for up to 5TB per user. https://products.office.com/en-ZA/onedrive-for-business/compare-onedrive-for-business-plans

Just giving suggestions.
 
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As I said if you only want to backup and don't rely on any special features Zoolz is like under $30 per TB for 1-3TB. I don't know how long it will last but seems a better option than recurring payments. May also be getting discount codes again for Black Friday. So feel free to give a shout if you're interested.
 
OOooh so you looking for an app rather than a place

Microsoft's Synctoy does the job. Best solution I find is 2 or more drives that alternate on a weekly basis.
 
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