The three-2-1 backup rule is damaged — this is how I safeguard my knowledge

The three-2-1 backup rule has been round for over twenty years, and it states that it is advisable to retailer three copies of your knowledge throughout two totally different sorts of media, and one at an offsite location. Whereas this technique made a whole lot of sense when it was launched, knowledge utilization has modified significantly over the past twenty years; lately, it is extremely simple to place your knowledge on a public cloud service and have it accessible from wherever.

The draw back to counting on public cloud suppliers is privateness — you do not have a lot say the place your knowledge is saved. So after I was strategizing on the best way to again up my knowledge, I got here up with a modified model of the 3-2-1 rule that made probably the most quantity of sense for my explicit use case. I will begin by saying that I’ve outsized storage necessities which might be undoubtedly not the norm — I at the moment use over 300TB of storage.

Out of that 300TB, simply over 100TB is the precise knowledge; it consists of all of the pictures and movies that my spouse and I’ve taken over the previous decade, a sizeable music library, and our media assortment. The first storehouse of the info is a DiskStation DS1823xs+ with seven NAS HDDs, totaling 128TB of storage. I then again up the NAS to a DiskStation DS3622xs+, which has a dozen 12TB drives.

The third copy of this knowledge is on an older DiskStation DS1019+; this was my major dwelling NAS till a couple of months in the past, till I made a decision to change to the DS1823xs+. As I used to be utilizing brand-new HDDs within the DS1823xs+, I simply left the DS1019+ and its knowledge intact; I intend to maneuver it to my mother and father home in a couple of weeks, and it’ll function the default offsite backup.

The lacking piece of the puzzle is a cloud backup answer; I used Google Workspace till the tip of final 12 months to again up all the info from the DS1019+ to the cloud, which was encrypted with Hyper Backup. This was potential as Google did not implement any knowledge limits with Workspace accounts — making the $20 month-to-month payment one of the best deal on this planet of backups — however that is not the case now.

I nonetheless use Google Images to again up pictures taken from telephones, however apart from that and storing paperwork in Drive, I haven’t got a lot want of cloud storage. Even when I made a decision to again up all that knowledge, it might be absurdly pricey to take action. 

Utilities like Tailscale make it extraordinarily simple to entry a NAS from wherever, and with the sheer quantity of information I’ve, it simply does not make sense to again as much as a cloud supplier. Additionally, each time I think about storing knowledge on a distant server, I am reminded of this quote from Dune: “The ability to destroy a factor is absolutely the management over it.”

Technically, the 3-2-1 rule mentions it is advisable to retailer knowledge in two totally different media varieties, however that is pointless for my very own wants, so I take advantage of mechanical exhausting drives all through. Flash storage continues to be too pricey, however I’m contemplating choosing up a quartet of 4TB WD Purple NVMe drives and seeing how they maintain up.

I do know it is not possible for everybody to retailer knowledge in three totally different places, however it is smart to at the very least again up knowledge to an exterior medium. This is likely one of the largest promoting factors of a NAS, and one of the best dwelling NAS servers make it simpler than ever to retailer your knowledge and media assortment in a centralized location. 

However in case you do not wish to go that route, I like to recommend an exterior SSD; the Essential X9 Professional is the one I take advantage of probably the most, and the 4TB variant is going for as low as $259.