<div dir="ltr">Hi all.<div><br></div><div>I recently had to organise an intervention - against myself.<div>I had full-blown backup OCD, with no signs of remission.<br></div><div><br></div><div style>My valuable data was stored on my desktop's SSD.</div>
<div style>- To be sure, I regularly copied the data to my laptop SDD.</div><div style>-- Knowing the risk of storing to SSD, I backup up to my main NAS (Network-Attached Storage) - a 6TB Synology DS-410 running under RAID 0.<br>
</div><div style>--- In case the NAS failed, I backed the ESPECIALLY important stuff to my second NAS, a D-Link DNS-323 with 3TB of disks inside.</div><div style>---- And, just to be sure, I occasionally copied key stuff to hard disks using a USB caddy...</div>
<div style>----- And I burnt stuff to DVD.</div><div style>------ And I uploaded stuff to my several domains, until my host complained that I was using web space for data archiving.</div><div style><br></div><div style>At that stage I realised I had a severe case of backup fever and needed to cure it.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>Having become thoroughly sick of burning copies of HUGE files to HDD, SSD, NAS, DVD and FTP, I needed to slap myself around the face and re-evaluate.</div><div style><br></div><div style>It was then I remembered we had installed 'Crashplan' at McKinnon - continuous online backups - and they apparently had a domestic plan as well. The nice bit was that a file is automatically backed up as soon as it is created or changed, with no user intervention.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>So I signed up (about $70 a year for unlimited cloud storage) - they have free plans for backing up to local drives or friends' computers.</div><div style><br></div><div style>There was a bit of a kerfuffle getting it to recognise my mapped networked drives on my LAN, but once I got off my 'I know better' high horse and actually followed the instructions, I now have terabtyes of my NAS storage flowing (very slowly, because of the nature of ADSL) into the cloud. So now I can maybe lay off the 4-layer backups and just do one or two paranoid copies... just to be sure. These things are not cured overnight.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>BTW - the Crashplan software is installed on my old Acer EEE box which is always running, so torrents, backups and data recovery can run continuously. The old EEE is a very nifty, silent and cheap little beast. Just be sure to add an extra gigabyte of RAM, a terabyte HDD and Windows 7 to make it sweet.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>This is NOT a paid or unpaid ad for Crashplan: there are other places that do a similar job, but Crashplan is good value for unlimited storage. </div><div style><br></div><div style>Actually the trigger for my decision was that my second NAS was getting a bit close to 80% full and I started pricing unit #3... it was than that I figured it would be around $1000 for 8TB, plus the electricity to run the thing 24x7. I started thinking that $70 a year for unlimited space was a worthwhile alternative... albeit at sloth-like data-recovery speeds.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>Now I just have to keep in mind the drawbacks of cloud storage... and hope that Crashplan is secure and not likely to go bankrupt soon.</div><div style><br></div><div style>--<br></div><div>
<div dir="ltr"><div>Mark Kelly</div><div>mark AT vceit DOT com</div><div><a href="http://vceit.com" target="_blank">http://vceit.com</a></div><div><br></div></div>
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