Let’s start with a little story time!
I’ve covered a lot of NAS - or Network Attached Storage - content on my channel over the past
couple years, but given how much my channel has grown since then, many of you might not
know why.
Back in 2016, I had a major storage crash and lost a LOT of data.
I had run out of space and was too caught up in the day to day of getting video projects
done (I was really focused on efficiency in production that year) to bother setting up
anything else, and was keeping all of my working data for projects I was working on stored
on a RAID0 array of hard drives.
That RAID0 was supposed to be for recording only, and then projects moved off of it, for
this very reason.
Wellp, after watching like 4 videos from other tech YouTubers about their RAID0 arrays dying
in the same year, mine kicked the bucket.
I lost just about everything I was working on at the time, and then in a scrambling attempt
to make sure I didn’t lose anything else, my other big archive drive managed to corrupt
or die or something, too.
I was left with a random assortment of loose hard drives and USB drives with no organization
and lost all of my work from 2016 back.
Sounds real doom and gloom, right?
Yeah - don’t be like me.
This is why I’ve partnered with Synology all these years since, to make sure I keep
this from happening to myself again, and to help showcase options that you can use to
keep yourself safe, as well.
But I’m missing an important piece of the puzzle, and we’re going to talk about that
today - March 31st is “World Backup Day” and I wanted to take part this year to help
make sure you’re safely backed up and won’t end up like me with data I can never get back.
You see, poor choices aren’t the only reason data gets lost.
On the computer side, 1 in 10 computers get infected each month with data-harming malware
or (even worse) ransomware, and 113 phones are lost or stolen per minute.
While we like to joke that today’s society only ever carries around useless selfies with
them, there’s still likely precious memories in photo or video form - or more important
data that you need to have backed up.
There’s a very important Rule for backups that most people honestly don’t follow.
This is called the “3-2-1 Backup Rule” or Backup Strategy.
It’s fairly straightforward, but even I haven’t managed to establish the “1”
in that, until today.
The 3-2-1 Backup Rule means having at least 3 total copies of your data, all in different
places and on different forms of media or devices.
Two of these should be local, but on different media, and one kept off-site, or not in the
same physical location.
So for example, let’s talk about the project files for this video.
In a typical editing setup, there’s an active copy of everything kept on a local hard drive
or SSD in my computer itself while I edit it.
That’s one copy.
The next copy would be my initial backup or archive of the footage I have recorded.
Some people choose to leave the footage on the original media they were shot on - SD
memory cards, for example - or in my case the footage is transferred to my editing storage
NAS, the Synology DS1817+.
That’s a second copy, on a different device.
If something happens to one of my copies, I quickly have another copy in my home that
I can work from.
This is a great start, but missing an important backup.
We only have the “2” out of our “3” point strategy.
What happens if someone steals all of your computer hardware?
Or you have a flood, tornado, fire, etc. that makes any data in your home inaccessible?
It’s easy to just assume that kind of thing can happen - but if you have mission-critical
data or irreplaceable sentimental data such as long-term family photos or home movies,
you want to be absolutely certain you’ll always have a backup you can retrieve your
data from.
This is why the 1 offsite copy rule is so important.
Some people use cloud-based solutions for this - though choose carefully, MySpace (yes
it still exists) just announced that it lost every music file stored on it since 2003 during
a botched server migration.
A great, more user-controlled and privacy-guaranteed option is a secure, raid-based storage solution
such as a Synology NAS!
Synology even provides tools to make it easier to keep your files mirrored between servers.
Also, by using Synology’s RAID builder, your data has another layer of protection
by providing redundancy so that if one of the drives in your NAS goes out (or more,
depending on setup) your data is still safe.
For this, I’m setting up their new DiskStation DS2419+.
This is a powerful, 12-bay storage server that I was super stoked to see get updated
this year.
I have it loaded up with Seagate’s IronWolf Pro drives, which are built for always-on
NAS workloads, come with awesome monitoring software integrated into Synology’s DSM
software, and include a 2 year data recovery plan in case the worst happens.
The DS2419+ starts with 12 bays, though can be expanded to 24 with a DX1215 expansion
unit for a total of 336TB capacity, if desired.
The NAS starts with a quad-core CPU, 4GB of RAM - though it’s upgradeable up to 32GB
if desired, and has a PCIe slot for either a dual M.2 NVMe expansion card, or a 10 gigabit
network card for high-bandwidth environments.
Synology offers Desktop backup via their Cloud Station Backup software to keep your data
stored to your NAS, and Hyper Backup to back up your whole NAS to another NAS, if desired.
I’ll be using this.
Again, this final backup copy needs kept off-site - which means not in your home.
Ideally this is somewhere you’ll have access to it but it won’t be easily disturbed or
damaged, such as at a family member’s home.
I’ll be mirroring my data to this NAS and keeping it online at my parents’ house for
me to periodically update during the night.
The DS2419+ is great for someone like me, as I just have… so much data.
But if your needs are smaller - Synology has a wide variety of network storage solutions,
so you’ll be able to find one that fits your needs perfectly.
But remember - the important part is to follow the rule for having safe backups of your data!
Two local copies on different mediums, and one copy stored off-site for worst-case scenarios.
It’s when we assume those scenarios won’t happen that they can cause the most problems
for our data.
I hope you found this video helpful - what backup strategies or tricks do you use?
Share them in the comments below.
Hit the like button if you enjoyed, and check out Synology’s storage options via the links
in the video description.
Shoutout to them for always supporting educational content here on the channel.
I’m EposVox, here to make tech easier and more fun, and I’ll see you next time.