I have a nas with 2x10tb drives. I mostly just have music, movies and tv shows on it.

People talk about raid not being a backup, but is that relevant for non-original data? I mean I can always get the media again if need be. It would just be an inconvenience.

What would you do?

  • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    I had a similar idea of 2×12TN drives, with one at home and backed up to monthly, whilst the other being in a remote location and backed up to physically every quarter

    • cosmic_slate@dmv.socialEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      Yeah, and your way can give you a free off-site backup.

      I guess if you really wanted to optimize to minimize the number of backups to take, you could just take one of the drives to the offsite location as part of the rotation.

      Say if you have 3 drives, you’d always keep your second oldest copy off-site. You want your most recent backup on-site for convenience of restoration, and you want your oldest on-site to use to take a backup without driving to your buddy’s place first.

      Let’s say your drives backup schedule is quarterly and with 3 drives, and the backup dates are: Drive A: Jan 2023, Drive B: April 2023, Drive C: July 2023

      Now it’s October. Use Drive A for your backup since it is the oldest. Now Drive B becomes your oldest

      Take Drive C, the now-second-oldest, to your buddy off site.

      Bring back Drive B from your buddy’s place since it used to be the second-oldest and is now the current oldest

      When it’s time to rotate the drives for backups, do a backup to the oldest drive first.

      Take , do your backup to your oldest drive locally first, then drive offsite to drop off your now-formerly-newest drive, and bring back the off-site drive as the oldest.

      • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        That’s a decent idea. I was planning to keep one off-site backup on the same drive in perpetuity, but this might be better in the long-run. Do you think I should maintain a staggered back-up strategy or keep both backups in sync (by backing them up together at the same time)? What would be the demerit of this method?

        • cosmic_slate@dmv.socialEnglish
          2·
          11 months ago

          Honestly I’m just super lazy and a bit ADHD. The more work a chore requires, the less likely I’m going to actually do it, so it’s just a personal hack.

          I don’t think there’s anything wrong with any approach as long as you can commit to doing it. It’s just a matter of finding something that you’re able to stick with. Maintaining cold backups is annoying lol