Unlimited online backup solutions
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Honestly? Instead of paying for those online backup services (which cost in a year what it would just to buy an external drive) - buy the external drive, make your backups then take the drive and store it in a fire safe or at a friend's house to get it offsite.
If you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur! - Red Adair
I look at it the other way 'round -- a year of cloud backups is the cost of one external drive and my external drives don't last longer than a year or maybe two. I have a pile of external USB drives and they are just incredibly unreliable. That's why I got the QNAP for local backups/redundancy -- largely filled it with 3TB drives extracted from USB cases that kept overheating or simply wouldn't connect to the host. I know these drives are de-tuned but they seem to work fine and they're a lot happier in the actively cooled QNAP server. This does assume that your ISP doesn't impose a transfer cap, of course. Otherwise the economics change.
Uwe Baemayr Senior Principal Software Developer Micro Focus
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I look at it the other way 'round -- a year of cloud backups is the cost of one external drive and my external drives don't last longer than a year or maybe two. I have a pile of external USB drives and they are just incredibly unreliable. That's why I got the QNAP for local backups/redundancy -- largely filled it with 3TB drives extracted from USB cases that kept overheating or simply wouldn't connect to the host. I know these drives are de-tuned but they seem to work fine and they're a lot happier in the actively cooled QNAP server. This does assume that your ISP doesn't impose a transfer cap, of course. Otherwise the economics change.
Uwe Baemayr Senior Principal Software Developer Micro Focus
Your external drives only last a year or two? Are you keeping them spun up all the time or something? I make a backup and then take 'em offline and put 'em away (in a safe or something). They never wear out that way. Hard drives are typically rated for thousands of hours of use (if active). I don't think I've ever had to replace a USB hard drive because of a hardware failure. I've got some here that are several years old and they work fine.
If you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur! - Red Adair
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Your external drives only last a year or two? Are you keeping them spun up all the time or something? I make a backup and then take 'em offline and put 'em away (in a safe or something). They never wear out that way. Hard drives are typically rated for thousands of hours of use (if active). I don't think I've ever had to replace a USB hard drive because of a hardware failure. I've got some here that are several years old and they work fine.
If you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur! - Red Adair
I have two permanently connected USB drives on my Win2012R2 server: one backs up the operating system and apps for bare-metal restore (that was a Seagate 3TB which failed, now it's a "Fantom" 1.5TB drive) and a WD 5TB drive backs up other family member's desktop/laptops for bare-metal restore (Crashplan only backs up data). The Windows 2012 server & client backup software requires local drives for these functions, so I can't target the QNAP. These USB 3 external drives spin up when they're in use or "touched" by the server and a few times a week, I get health alerts saying they're too hot (the Seagate drive quickly hit 130F+ when under load, the WD drive is more reasonable). I actually have a fan on them and that really helps. I will say I found that USB 3 drives are more reliable than USB 2 when it comes to not dropping the connection to the computer. That was always a problem with USB 2 and E-SATA. Lots of drive reboots. The other USB 2 and 3 drives are disconnected and stored and I manually back up my music library a couple of times a year for safekeeping. Twice over the years, when reconnected, the drives were unreadable. They'd spin up but the server gives me the dreaded "The USB device could not be recognized" or "has failed". That's when I started putting more stuff into Crashplan. I also use old bare drives for offsite backup (family recordings, photos, videos) and that's been reliable.
Uwe Baemayr Senior Software Developer Micro Focus
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I have two permanently connected USB drives on my Win2012R2 server: one backs up the operating system and apps for bare-metal restore (that was a Seagate 3TB which failed, now it's a "Fantom" 1.5TB drive) and a WD 5TB drive backs up other family member's desktop/laptops for bare-metal restore (Crashplan only backs up data). The Windows 2012 server & client backup software requires local drives for these functions, so I can't target the QNAP. These USB 3 external drives spin up when they're in use or "touched" by the server and a few times a week, I get health alerts saying they're too hot (the Seagate drive quickly hit 130F+ when under load, the WD drive is more reasonable). I actually have a fan on them and that really helps. I will say I found that USB 3 drives are more reliable than USB 2 when it comes to not dropping the connection to the computer. That was always a problem with USB 2 and E-SATA. Lots of drive reboots. The other USB 2 and 3 drives are disconnected and stored and I manually back up my music library a couple of times a year for safekeeping. Twice over the years, when reconnected, the drives were unreadable. They'd spin up but the server gives me the dreaded "The USB device could not be recognized" or "has failed". That's when I started putting more stuff into Crashplan. I also use old bare drives for offsite backup (family recordings, photos, videos) and that's been reliable.
Uwe Baemayr Senior Software Developer Micro Focus
Seems that we have forgotten that backups used to be made with an offline storage medium called tape. OK, so that's not "practical" these days, but keeping backup media online when it's not necessary seems to me to be a waste of equipment and power. Do the backup drives (and I assume you're using them as backup, not as redundant active storage [I.E. RAID]) absolutely have to be spun up and available all the time? Think about it for a second. Is your personal installation so active that you couldn't take a few minutes every week or two, spin up the USB drives, make your backup and then put them away? Bet you'd save money and the aggravation of always having to buy new equipment! I've been developing software for 40 years and have had personal equipment for the last 30 or so. Aside from the occasional upgrade or self-inflicted issue I've never had much in the way of actual equipment failure. I gave one of the "cloud" backup services a try a few months back. It was as slow as watching paint dry. On the other hand, though, if I need to restore something from my last backup now I simply go into my safe, get the media and plug the drive in and it works every time. Offhand, in my humble opinion, this "cloud" technology (which really ain't anything different than centralized computing was 40 years ago) has been WAY oversold. With just a few simple procedures I not only keep my material private (and out of someone else's server room) and have reliable backup. Think about it ... ;-)
Bruce W. Roeser Senior Software Engineer Kronos, Inc. If you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur! - Red Adair