Ask Slashdot: What's The Best Way To Backup Large Amounts Of Personal Data? (foxdeploy.com)

An anonymous Slashdot reader has "approximately two terabytes of photos, currently sitting on two 4-terabyte 'Intel Rapid Storage' RAID 1 disks." But now they're considering three alternatives after moving to a new PC: a) Keep these exactly as they are... The current configuration is OK, but it's a pain if a RAID re-sync is needed as it takes a long time to check four terabytes.

b) Move to "Storage Spaces". I've not used Storage Spaces before, but reports seem to show it's good... It's a Good Thing that the disks are 100% identical and removable and readable separately. Downside? Unknown territory.

c) Break the RAID, and set up the second disk as a file-copied backup... [This] would lose a (small) amount of resilience, but wouldn't suffer from the RAID-sync issues, ideally a Mac-like "TimeMachine" backup would handle file histories.

Any recommendations?
This is also a good time to share your experiences with Storage Spaces, so leave your answers in the comments. What's the best way to backup large amounts of personal data?

Comments

Come the fuck on

[Anonymous Coward]

2 Terabytes is nothing.

Here's how you do this:

10 You buy an external hard disk that is 4 Terabytes or larger, and USB 3.0.
20 Copy the fucking files to that thing.

You're done. Now you have two copies: one on whatever bad idea you have as your main drive, and the other on a physically separate drive.

Not good enough? GOTO 10

RAID is not backup

[bad_fx]

Say with with me: "RAID is not backup!"

Re:RAID is not backup

[Frobnicator]

Say with with me: "RAID is not backup!"

Indeed. There is also a difference between backup and archive.

RAID = This is running live, and I need a duplicate that is instantly available so I can keep running in case one drive fails. The trick is that if there is an operation that destroys data (e.g. ransomware infection that encrypts your stuff) then you lose all disks. This is why RAID is not backup.

Backup = Just in case the machine dies, or I accidentally delete a bunch of stuff, or a virus hits, I can restore from the backup. This generally follows the 3-2-1 rule: At least three copies, at least two media, at least one off site. Businesses often use D2D2T systems for this.

Archive = I will probably never look at this again, but I absolutely need to keep a copy around for historic or business reasons. Think about services like Iron Mountain or Amazon Glacier. Tape archives that are quite cheap and almost certainly never reviewed again. This is along the lines of "show me the obituaries from a newspaper published 7 May 1957", or similar.

For the original story, it seems like he is looking for an archival solution rather than a backup solution.