Looking for a recommendation on a backup system (setup)

JJ, welcome to these public User Forums.

ATI 2018 is fully capable of doing what you want without the need to upgrade to ATI 2021.

Personally, I would recommend making separate backups of your two SSD drives, where the reasoning for this is that the data on each drive will change at different rates.  Your OS & apps SSD is likely to change less often than your second SSD containing your files and data, so it would be better to set a schedule for each drive separately to capture the changes that do occur.

The further reason for having separate backups per drive is that unless you are extremely unfortunate and suffer an environmental type issue (total power loss with surge, fire, flood etc), then drives do not normally both fail at the same time, and if a failure does occur, then it will be just a single drive.  It is easier & simpler to recover a single drive from a backup containing only that drive, both from a performance and data transfer aspect, especially if transferring data for the recovery across a network connection.

The choice of where to store your backups is a user choice.  The recommended best practise is to create and store 3 different backups in at least 2 different locations with 1 backup kept offline and away from any potential risk.

For my own PC's, I use a mix of internal, external and network backup locations depending on the PC and resources available.  Example, my main laptop has a fast SSD for the OS, apps and some user data, plus has a 2TB internal HDD that I use to store some backups and other data.  Backups for this laptop go to the 2TB drive (to enable a fast recovery when travelling if needed), plus to an external USB 3.x 2TB HDD, to my 3TB NAS storage and finally to the Acronis Cloud.  The frequency of backups vary according to the data being selected as source.  Backups to the NAS and Acronis Cloud typically are done weekly because are slower than those to the internal & external HDD drives.

External USB drives do not normally run continually as the PC power settings allow for such drives to be put into low power mode / sleep when not in actual use, plus can be physically disconnected as needed and just connected on the days when they will be used for backup activities etc.

NAS is a more expensive storage solution but depending on the type and size of NAS can offer greater protection by employing RAID arrays of drives where a single drive failure doesn't result in data loss as a new drive can replace the failed drive and be rebuilt by the RAID array.  My own Synology NAS has 2 x 3TB WD drives in a 2 drive RAID array giving such protection.

Acronis Cloud storage is a subscription service that cannot be bought separately, so you would be looking at upgrading to ATI 2021 with a subscription version to use this option, where the cost varies according to the size of cloud storage needed.

Wow! Steve, first of all, THANK YOU for taking the time to send me such a detailed reply!!!

You gave me a LOT to think about (and research) and I appreciate it because I'm just some random Internet guy and you helped a lot! I used a couple bullet points below to separate out my questions. I feel selfish asking for so much help and even moreso by putting bullet points for each question. Sorry!

• It's funny because you mentioned Synology, because that is a company that was recommended to me by someone much smarter at IT stuff than me! I just went to their website and was blown away at how many Products and Solutions they have. To be honest, most of their stuff seems like it would be overkill for my purpose (and probably very expensive!) I work at a small business, so we usually fall between "business" solutions and "home" solutions when it comes to any technology or IT stuff.

  Would you mind sharing which model, or main product line, you have as your NAS? Does this seem like a good place to start?? https://www.synology.com/en-us/solution/personal_backup

• And I have another question about backups and how they work. If we get hacked, especially with ransomware, how do we restore files that are "clean"? I watched this video from Acronis: https://www.acronis.com/en-us/products/cyber-protect/

  That seems like Acronis is not only doing the file backup, but also malware detection? Almost a one-stop-shop for cybersecurity. Acronis says they not only detect the malware, but then take a backup and restore your file(s).
   

• So regardless of what NAS or "External Hard Drive" I end up getting, when it happens and I need to use the backup, how am I supposed to make sure I am restoring "clean" files? I've read that some malware can infect a computer and just sit there, idle, for days or weeks, before activating. 
   
• And you also mentioned separate backups of my 2 drives (Drive C: is for Windows + programs and my Drive D: is for files only) Do 'best practices' say to backup Drive C: (Windows and programs) and then try to restore them from the backup? Or if the worst happens, do I just go and format that drive completely (hopefully deleting the virus/malware) and completely reinstall Windows and reinstall all the programs manually, one by one?

Again, thank you for your detailed reply! I've been paranoid about backups recently, and since it's the end of the year, I figure now is the time to do something about it.

The "Garmin" hack earlier this year affected me since I couldn't sync my watch and other things (not a HUGE life-changing problem to have for a few days, but I saw the effects first hand) and I read that Garmin finally paid the ransom! I can't imagine how a big company can not have a backup, or not be able to restore the data. It's probably a thousand times more complicated than my single Desktop computer with 2 SSDs hehehehe.

And then just the other day, that "Solarwinds" hack became public, and I don't know much about it, but I read an article that said that specific malware can infect a system and stay inactive so it doesn't trigger any warnings. It mimics legitimate computer programs/processes, and then it can activate days or weeks later. So how in the world would I, a non-IT-expert, know how far back to go (in time/ days, weeks)  to select the proper backup?

Thank you again, so much :) !!!

JJ, my own Synology NAS is nearly 5 years old now, bought back in early 2016 and is a DS215j with 2 x WD 3TB drives in RAID configuration and connects to my home network as an independent device that is available to the various PC's / laptops that are around the house.

When considering a NAS, I would definitely recommend getting one with a minimum of 2 drives using RAID for the extra protection this affords.  I recommended the same NAS to my wife's cousin and he had a drive start to fail last year which we were able to swap out and replace by a new one with no loss of data at all, just the downtime needed to rebuild the new drive in the RAID array.

The NAS is also protected behind my broadband router firewall and no open internet facing ports to allow for direct malware attack, plus has its own unique user accounts that are no mirrored on any of the PC's using it, along with using 2 Factor Authentication as additional protection.  I use the NAS primarily as backup storage and never map any Windows drive letters to it to prevent that attack vector being used if a PC became infected with malware etc.

Protection against any malware / ransomware is a more difficult question to answer as this has many different factors that can be involved.  Primarily, it is a matter of user safe practise in not visiting obvious sources of malware on the web, not opening unsolicited email attachments, not clicking on links in emails unless 150% certain they are genuine, not downloading hacked / cracked software, avoiding the use of torrent streams of software etc.

The second, equally important factor is the type of backup best practise mentioned earlier, i.e. having a 3-2-1 backup strategy approach, keeping backup data disconnected from possible threat sources, using multiple backups and where data is of critical or vital importance, potentially using more than one backup application or process.

Preventing malware / ransomware from getting a foothold in the first place is the best approach, followed closely by protecting the disks and data by having comprehensive backups.

Regular scheduled backups of critical data alongside using other tools to replicate / mirror that data will help minimise the threat posed by malware but not guarantee this if it can get a foothold and can operate in the background unknown to the user, hence you need to have a quality security solution in place too!

Recovery from a malware / ransomware infection / attack should always start from a point of having a known good backup to restore from, so that you can safely fully wipe all existing disk drives to eliminate any malware before starting afresh.  This is an area that may require further consideration depending on what malware is involved, as there are some threats that can get right down into the computer BIOS areas if these are not protected correctly and all BIOS updates and firmware is kept fully upto date.  There was a lot of media focus on this in the past several years when vulnerabilities were found in the chips used by such as Intel etc!

The task of determining what is 'clean' data and what is compromised is another difficult one to answer as again this really depends on what malware or ransomware is involved.  Typically, ransomware will encrypt user files in order to try to extort ransom money using bitcoin, so it would be fairly simple to see that files are not accessible because of the encryption or by the new file extension given by the ransomware!

Establishing 'clean' Windows OS and application files etc, is probably the easiest to do, as you could ensure that after each / every significant change in this area, you make new full backups of this disk drive data while still keeping previous backups as a precaution.  Hence my earlier comments about separate backups per disk!

Garmin & Solarwinds are probably nothing for the average PC user to worry directly about, but it is worrying when these large companies and government agencies do not have adequate backups and protection that they even consider paying ransomware demands!  Unfortunately, this is not a new business scenario!  I have seen businesses in pieces and grown men in tears first-hand when a disk drive has failed and no backup was held - this back in the 1980's when I was working as a hardware engineer long before the internet and ransomware was more than an idea for the majority of people!

Like Steve Smith I have a Synology NAS; it is of similar vintage and has 4 x 4TB WD Red NAS dives in a RAID 5 type array. All drives are still going strong. I suspect RAID 5 takes longer to do a rebuild than RAID 0 used by Steve; at one point I replaced a 1 TB WD black with a 4TB Red and it took a long time to rebuild (more than 25 hours).

Like Steve I would recommend using unique passwords and user names on the NAS, and advise against using mapped drives to the NAS This helps preserver the NAS from nasties. The best protection is to exercise extreme care when opening email attachments, clicking on links in emails and SMS, and when surfing the internet. Multiple defences are good; I have Norton 360 which checks www sites to make sure they are safe; I have virus scanner on my Asus RT-AX3000 router which is fully locked down as is possible - it includes a module that monitors iOt devices for suspicious activity (none found so far). 

Ian

I too use a Synology NAS. Mine is the DS213j, basically same as Steve's but one version older. It is a 2 bay NAS in which I have 2 WD Red 3TB drives using Synology's SHR Raid (data redundancy). I think this may be what Steve is using as well.

My NAS is used solely for backups. There is a feature of the Synology that I really like. I have it configured to turn itself on and off on a schedule. That way I can have the NAS on for only a couple hours while my backups are being run and then it shuts down. I don't have to think about it. If I need to go there for a recovery I can just manually turn it on.

In my case, I run three types of backups.

1. A full disk/partition backup of my C: drive (SSD). I only run this one bi-weekly.

2. A, incremental scheme file/folders backup of my data, mostly on the D: drive (SSD) but I also catch the C:\users and C:\ProgramData folders. This is done nightly.

3. A disk/partition backup of my G: drive (HDD), which contains things not often changed, e.g. music, photos, etc.). This is run on schedule bi-weekly or manually as needed.

I will chime in here too.  My backup task strategy almost mirrors that of BrunoC.  The only difference that I might point out is that I use differential Method backups whereas I know that BrunoC and I'm fairly certain Steve Smith use the incremental Method.  Beyond backup Method is Scheme.  My theory in backup scheme is to either make Full disk backups of data or use an Automatic cleanup scheme with a "Keep no more than 3 recent version chains" rule.  Using cleanup achieves what is for me, the proper balance of number of backups I have of all data, sufficient control of the disk space needed to service that balance, maintain acceptable performance levels of True Image, and the ability to lessen the dependency which exists in backup chains created by using the .tibx format.  I also lean toward daily backups for the backups in which I use the differential Method and limit those to 6 before the next Full version is created.

beyond that the difference is in what hardware I use to achieve a level of safety I find acceptable.  I am a devout PC enthusiast thus I custom build most of what I use.  Having said that, I do use storage devices that are manufactured by OEM's as some offerings I find acceptable.  I personally do not use Synology but they certainly are one of the major players in the NAS space and offer good support.  So I can give them my recommendation. Keep in mind when considering NAS devices that most if not all true NAS offerings are Linux based devices.  Each of these will most likely have a backup application of there own installed on the device.  Using that backup application to backup the NAS itself to an external USB disk is recommended as a safeguard against corruption on the NAS device itself.

Enchantech wrote:

...... Keep in mind when considering NAS devices that most if not all true NAS offerings are Linux based devices.  Each of these will most likely have a backup application of there own installed on the device.  Using that backup application to backup the NAS itself to an external USB disk is recommended as a safeguard against corruption on the NAS device itself.

+ 1 Good thing to remember 

In reality the OS used by the NAS should be transparent to the user as all is managed via a web interface.  For my Synology NAS, there is no obvious sign of the underlying Linux OS unless you dig deep to see the file system in use for the drive volumes.

Compared to my Linux systems, it is simple and easy to manage once you get the hang of the main control panel (Synology DSM) at the heart of the system.

Steve,

Yes, the Linux OS on these devices is transparent to the user.  I am not sure what filesystem Synology uses however, I am confident that not all of them can be backed up by TI.  One example is the TerraMaster device.  It uses the BtrFS filesystem which is a copy-on-write journal type system which is completely unreadable by TI.  Since these devices can become corrupted it is prudent to make backup copies of the devices themselves just like any other computing device.

Bob, I have never used any version of ATI to backup the NAS as there is very little data stored on it that I don't already have copies of in other places and on other backup devices, so the NAS filesystem has never been an issue or concern.

Steve,

So I have had the occasion to have one of my NAS devices suffer an OS disk failure.  That device allows for the setup of a mirror of the OS disk which I had done however, that did not work in my case as the failure of the original OS disk corrupted the mirror disk.  So as a result I had to start fresh and because this particular device does not use the storage disk to install the OS on like Synology and TerraMaster do, I had to then rebuild the storage drives on the device which of course wiped all data.  Like you I keep other copies so I did not loose any data but I did loose the OS where if I had a backup would have helped in that I would not have had to reconfigure the software.  For this device I now keep the OS on an SSD mirror along with a third copy on a USB flash drive.

For my TerraMaster device the approach is different.  Since this device installs the device OS itself on the storage drives it is necessary to backup that install.  This can be done on the TerraMaster to an external USB device and I would think that Synology offers a similar method. In my case I have a dedicated external USB disk for this purpose.  It is formatted as BtrFS which is the filesystem the device uses natively.  I have the option during backup to capture any folders contained on the device so this allows me to only capture what I truly need to.  If for any reason I loose the OS install on this device I can replace the disk(s) if necessary then, I would rebuild the disk array.  If I for any reason loose other data, then I have created a shared folder on the device named restore which I can copy all data from the external disk to the shared folder which I then could using the included file manager, copy that data where needed. This all gives me a bullet proof system.  I am sure you can do something similar with the Synology units.

I did some checking and Synology now offers the BtrFS filesystem on some devices.  I would presume that the upgrade would be DSM dependent mostly so if you can reach the DSM level necessary to support BtrFS and wish to make the change from the previous EXT4 filesystem that would be possible. 

Bob, the process I used when I dealt with the one disk failure in a Synology NAS (same model as my own) is described in webpage: How to Replace a Failed Hard Drive in Your Synology NAS

The Synology OS was equally transparent and would only be an issue if all drives in the RAID array were to fail simultaneously.  The same process as above is also used to upgrade to larger disk sizes when needed or wanted.

Steve,

I believe you are using raid 1 on your Diskstation which is a 2 drive NAS.  I also suspect that your NAS filesystem is EXT4 and there is nothing wrong with that by any means.  So yes since you are using raid level 1 and the EXT4 filesystem you simply have 2 way mirror where one drive mirrors the other.  So if one drive fails you can replace that drive, touch off the rebuild and the existing drive will mirror itself to the new drive and all is well again.

If you use the Btrfs filesystem this scenario is essentially the same.  If however you were to suffer a disk failure of both disks (I know chances are low for this happening) you would be starting from scratch.  This is what happened to me.  So at that moment I decided never again.  So I had a look at the Synology DSM version 6.2 manual and sure enough, the device offers a method to backup the system configuration to a local device or a network location.  What will occur here is the backup will create a small file (Synology creates a .dss file) and then gives you options of where to store the file.  Doing this a few times and saving the small file as a just in case will save you literally hours of reconfiguration if you happen to loose the device completely however unlikely that is.  You will find info on this on page 57 of the 6.2 user guide.

I do this very thing on my TerraMaster NAS.  I save the file to a local internal drive on my main desktop, to my other NAS, to a flash drive and to the cloud.  I update this if the system gets an update/upgrade or I install new apps or change exiting settings.

I am finding this discussion very interesting. I checked the specifications of my DS 414 and (apparently) it only supports EXT4. Have been thinking about a getting a new NAS; not sure if I will go for a build you own - it is tempting ...

Ian

Bob, good point and reminder about using the NAS configuration backup option as it had been a little while since I last updated my backup, so have done so this morning!  Well worth having the 10kb .dss backup file to save some hours of work trying to reconfigure everything that has taken years to be as it is today!

I have doubts that my Synology NAS would support using Btrfs given it is over 4 years vintage but I have seen no issues with the existing ext4 format used for the 2 volumes it has which is using the Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) and its protection for 1-drive fault tolerance.

A different discussion point, but finding WD Red CMR NAS drives looks to be getting more difficult with lots of complaints on the net for folks finding the drives supplied were SMR instead which are not recommended for NAS use!  May be time to switch to Seagate IronWolf NAS drives when the time comes to replace or upgrade my drives!

Steve,

Glad to hear you're up to date now.

With respect to Btrfs compatibility, in general terms the underlying software version is necessary, (DSM 6.1 up) and a sufficient CPU and memory are a consideration.  If your device is the DS218 model (I believe I remember seeing you post that somewhere) it qualifies for compatibility.  Check the link below for the low down on using this filesystem.  Be forewarned that as one would expect a change from EXT4 to Btrfs will delete all data.  The benefits of upgrading are compelling however.

Btrfs

On drive upgrades, the SMR issue is very much something that one must consider.  I certainly would not run an SMR drive with Btrfs or any other COW or Journal files system.  I believe that would be a disaster.

I have Seagate Ironwolf 6TB drives installed in my TerraMaster NAS.  These are CMR drives, spindle speed of 7200 rpm, a 256MB cache, and are rated at 210MBps maximum sustained transfer rate.  they have a 3 year warranty.  I can attest to there great performance.

I just recently put together a storage device based on Windows Storage Spaces using Seagate EXOS 7E8 disks which are Enterprise class drives.  Similar specs except MSTR of 250MBps and carry a 5 year warranty.  So far these drives have proven very good.  I am not impressed with Storage Spaces however.

Ian,

I have to agree that your DS414 is not going to support Btrfs.  On the topic of a build your own solution, I have done that too.  I use FreeNAS as the OS and I built the device in 2014 and have upgraded the IS to version 11.2 thus far from the original 9.3 version I started with.  Not sure what the most current version is, 12.X I believe. 

A build your own solution is fine and there are a number of ways to go with it.  FreeNAS is probably the best supported solution in my opinion.  I can tell you though that the learning curve is steep with it and the support Forum boys expect you to be using the recommended server hardware to run it. 

FreeNAS uses a ZFS filesystem which is I think the oldest of the COW Journal type filesystems. That also has a learning curve but is not all that complex.

Bob, my NAS is a DS215j which doesn't support Btrfs according to webpage: Which Synology NAS models support the Btrfs file system?

Ah, must have been whomever you were helping having the DS218 or possibly BrunoC.  Well hopefully the drive info was of some help.

Mine is a DS213j. But thanks for the reminder to backup the configuration. When I saved it to the proper location I found three others saved there, but the latest was 2 1/2 years old.

Your welcome BrunoC