[NA] EHD or NAS

Let'sgoflying!

Let'sgoflying!

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
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west Texas
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Dave Taylor
Biz/personal laptop; 500gb Lenovo -nothing special.
Just need a backup.
My understanding is I can get a <$100 EHD (spinny, or SSD) to do this but its all manual; I have to remember to do the backups and select the files.
Or I can get an NAS (didn't know where to begin so don't know prices) and it will do full or incremental backups once set up - and on a schedule without my interference.
Is this about the case?
Don't want to lose those vital pilot education files and fly-in photos

Also, this laptop is powered by usb-c. Can I use that port for data to this backup device (assuming the battery if up to it)?
 
Backups are really part of a 321 strategy. 3 copies across 2 different media with one offsite.

A NAS is likely overkill for you. So something like a western digital backup drive running their software will copy files behind the scenes for you.

Yes you can use your USB C for data as long as it supports data as sometimes the manufacturer puts a power only port.

Adding an external backup like Backblaze (backblaze.com) adds the offsite component.

It can get a little spendy. But can you tolerate losing any of the data?
 
There are a variety of backup strategies. One aspect to consider is how much effort you want to put into making backups vs the cost of lost data. And also consider how sensitive your data is.... how much effort/$$ are you willing to spend to protect your backups from prying eyes, from corruption, and the like.

An external hard drive is quite simple to use, and is quite simple to physically protect (you could even put it in one of those "fireproof" boxes if you are particularly concerned about losing it).

A NAS has the advantage of not requiring the constant connect/disconnect of the external drive. The consumer NAS devices aren't quite as robust as I like. I had a lacie NAS RAID, but it died and lacie was no help in recovering the data. The NAS chassis itself died, not the drives, but the data wasn't recoverable. Several years ago I switched to a Synology DS220j for a couple of reasons, including experimenting with some of the Synology extras like the security camera software and VPN server and also a video server. But I'm a geek, setting up the synology box to provide my own personal cloud is pretty straightforward for a geek/nerd...but it's not quite consumer-friendly.

and with a NAS, you still have to setup the backups, just like with an external drive. you just wouldn't have to pull the drive out and connect it every time. I use a mac, so it's quite simple to setup timemachine to do backups. I don't use a windoze laptop, so I can't help you with various backup apps for windoze.

oh, and yes, most of the external drives you can get are easily powered by USB-C.
 
if you use the cloud, you'll need upstream bandwidth.

Also, consider the cost of that much cloud storage, every month, every year.

And make sure you encrypt your data. You encrypt it, not the cloud storage provider.
 
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