I'm bad at backups

[Scott Cooper's Grand Slam]

Hey SoSH,

My computer is a MacBook Air. I'm really bad at backing up data on it. Help me suck less.

I had a Samsung rugged SSD drive. It's great (small, fast, durable), except I'd rarely plug it in so the only time important files would get backed up is when I'd remember to plug in the drive. Once I filled the 1 TB capacity, I realized I needed a new drive. I should've got a 2 TB or higher version of the same drive, but I got greedy. I got a 5 TB spinning platter drive from Western Digital. It's fine (a little loud for my liking, but it was fast enough). While unplugging it recently, I dropped the drive. It's now making a clicking sound on startup. I assume the drive is dead and beyond my skills for recovery (although I'm open to ideas). Nothing on the drive is worth the several hundred dollars I'm seeing that professional recovery services cost.

Can you help me make an idiot-proof backup system? It seems like my number one issue is that I don't always want to have or remember to have an external drive plugged into my laptop. So what do I need? A NAS?

Most of my essential files are automatically backed up to cloud storage. The TB of files I just lost were large video files, and backups of vacation photos and the like that I made redundant copies of and offloaded to local (and now dead) storage.

 

[Max Power]

It sounds like you don't actually have a backup. If some stuff only exists on a single external drive, then that's just where its primary storage is and you don't have a backup. That might be fine for some stuff that you wouldn't mind losing if there were a disaster. You'd just want to make sure that storage is as reliable as possible. A NAS device with mirrored drives would at least protect you against a single drive failure and make physical damage from dropping much less likely.

Keeping the most important stuff on your laptop and the cloud is a good idea. Then you could make a secondary copy to that NAS if you really wanted, along with the videos and things that aren't as important.

 

[Scott Cooper's Grand Slam]

It sounds like you don't actually have a backup.

That's exactly my problem, and I hadn't thought of it until you put it like that. I don't have a backup, I just have different primary storage.

• Very important stuff is in the cloud, but I have no local copies
• Almost nothing is on my laptop hard drive. Some stuff probably should be
• I should have redundant copies of the cloud stuff in case of unlikely catastrophe (Terminator, cyber warfare, EMP) or human error (SAAS/IAAS just burps and everything is gone)

Thank you!

 

[ColdSoxPack]

If you use Apple's built in Time Machine, you will have local backups and as you run out of space on your external it will automatically delete the oldest file. Keep a 2 TB SSD attached and you are good to go.

P.S. Since you have your important stuff backed to the cloud, you may never need to local backups. I never do.

 

[Andy Merchant]

Something like this Synology NAS Black Friday deal could help: View: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C8814GKB?tag=slickdeals&ascsubtag=478b4d32ae6d11efa482aea895ef3e670INT


You could put a couple of disks in it for redundant local storage (no data loss if one disk dies), store important files there, and even use it to store Time Machine backups of your Mac.

 

[B H Kim]

Backblaze.com

$9/month (less if you buy a one or two year plan), and it automatically backs ups everything on your computers and on all attached hard drives. My wife's IMac died and they sent a hard drive with an up-to-date complete backup within a few days.

 

[AlNipper49]

I save everything to the cloud and a local NAS. The NAS is backed up with backblaze. My cloud is covered by what we use for our clients (used to be Cloudify. Since bought by DATTO/Kaseya)

 

[DominicJD]

Backblaze.com

$9/month (less if you buy a one or two year plan), and it automatically backs ups everything on your computers and on all attached hard drives. My wife's IMac died and they sent a hard drive with an up-to-date complete backup within a few days.

+1 to Backblaze -- easy to set up and just runs in the background. I use a combination of Backblaze for my entire machine, plus OneDrive for all my personal stuff. I've also got an old Airport Time Capsule in the house hooked up. Might be useful if you can get an old refurbished one. You can also use a Synology NAS as a TimeMachine backup destination.

 

[Moosey]

+1 to both Backblaze and Synology. Backblaze is easier, Synology gives you more control and is more expensive.

In addition to being a TimeMachine backup destination, Synology can do full backups of MacOS machines, I do it for my son's MacMini via their Active Backup for Business Package. It's ridiculously easy and nice, imo. I have every machine and tablet backed up in my house now through my Synology NAS and it was 95% painless. Also, everything that is super critical is backed up to an offsite location. I never thought I would be such a dork about continuity, but here I am.

 

[Scott Cooper's Grand Slam]

Thanks all. Purchased 2 years of Backblaze at the Black Friday price ($132) and got a 2TB Samsung rugged drive for about that much. I think I'll still need a NAS someday, but I'm prioritizing portability so an external USB drive will have to do for now.

 

[ColdSoxPack]

My own experiences with network attached storage were the transfer speeds were slow and the Western Digital machine I used was no longer supported with software updates by WD. Hence the SSD.

 

[nolasoxfan]

Thanks all. Purchased 2 years of Backblaze at the Black Friday price ($132) and got a 2TB Samsung rugged drive for about that much. I think I'll still need a NAS someday, but I'm prioritizing portability so an external USB drive will have to do for now.

I have been looking at that same Samsung rugged drive. The La Cie drives seem like better deals (discounts), but the Samsung has a cool factor to it.

 

[Scott Cooper's Grand Slam]

I have been looking at that same Samsung rugged drive. The La Cie drives seem like better deals (discounts), but the Samsung has a cool factor to it.

Thanks for the heads up on this! I just bought this drive, too. I might return the Samsung. The 5 TB capacity is super appealing. Normally La Cie drives are overpriced, but this is a decent deal.

The Samsung drive is the better drive because it's solid state (faster, quieter, inherently more durable/reliable). But for bang-for-your-buck and more than twice the capacity, the La Cie rugged at 5 TB for ~$140 is nice.

 

[ColdSoxPack]

"The Samsung drive is the better drive because it's solid state (faster, quieter, inherently more durable/reliable)."

This is the key sentence for me. I would not trust 5 GB of my data to an inferior drive, regardless of the cost. Hope it works well for you.

 

[cgori]

My view is that SSDs in general are not ideal for single-source backup, especially not for cold/unpowered storage backup if that's how you will mostly use it. If you are keeping it online/powered-on and monitored all the time it might be reasonable. Most modern SSDs using MLC/etc storage have serious ECC backing them up (BCH or something fancier these days) which means they will need to be actively managed over time in order to prevent bitflips. If you can find an SLC drive it'd be a little more reliable but I think the capacities on them are quite low and therefore mostly not made anymore.

SSDs can fail almost spontaneously/catastrophically compared to magnetic media, which will generally degrade more linearly, to my understanding.

 

[canderson]

Here’s what I do. I have 2 Samsung T9 Shield or whatever 5GB external SSDs. I have one connected to by Mac Studio that backs up daily via Time Machine.

I have an identical 2nd drive kept at my office. I have a biweekly reminder set to remind me to take the one drove at home to work in the morning and exchange it with the one there.

This ensures if my Mac dies I at most am only out 2 weeks of files.

 

[88 MVP]

For anyone with a Mac, 2TB of iCloud storage is only $10 a month, which is enough for me. It’s dead simple, and I don’t have to remember to periodically connect my Time Machine drive. Photo/video and document libraries are automatically backed up, and you can add additional folders to the iCloud Drive easily enough.

 

[Moosey]

My own experiences with network attached storage were the transfer speeds were slow and the Western Digital machine I used was no longer supported with software updates by WD. Hence the SSD.

This is curious to me, what was the NAS if you don't mind me asking?

"The Samsung drive is the better drive because it's solid state (faster, quieter, inherently more durable/reliable)."

This is the key sentence for me. I would not trust 5 GB of my data to an inferior drive, regardless of the cost. Hope it works well for you.

I wouldn't trust 5GB of my data on any one drive, so it really comes down to the redundancy level with which you are comfortable.