Onsite backup  

Today we are going to look at a few options for onsite backup options features and benefits

Before we look into any options we will look at Best Practice. Best Practice  is offline Backups at an alternate location. Offline? Offline means only connected to the PC when backing up. This limits your risk of a virus and even power spikes. Alternate Location? I always say if your house burns down and you have the backup next to your PC. Its going to be lost too.

My Setup

Ironically the “Offline Backup” that i choose is an “Online” backup for a few reasons.

1.  Its easy to do and setup! Of course thats a great number 1 reason.
2.  Don’t have to worry about taking a physical Hard drive to  your offsite location weekly, daily or whatever your schedule is.
3.  Don’t have to worry about the physical Hardware failing because whoever you backup your files to takes care of this transparently. Its what you are paying for.
4.  Remember a cloud app like OneDrive, Google Drive etc is a copy not a backup. If your files get a virus on your computer and infect your OneDrive then you have an infected copy to.

Second internal Hard Drive

This can be done with most desktops and some rare laptops. Its an alright option and fast but i wouldn’t recommend it for a few reasons. Its just a copy. Can be prone to virus’ and disasters.

External HDD  

These are a great idea. Connect it up Backup all your files that you want and disconnect. Very portable and cheap and easy. These “ironically” tend to fail more because people tend to take less care with them.

NAS (Network Attached Storage)

These are super handy for if you have a couple computers. Then you can send your backups to the NAS. Typically the software running on the NAS is easy to setup and use. Very handy for expanding your storage and replacing the occasional failed disk.

A Great option for the more paranoid about your data is ioSafe http://iosafe.com/ which are fireproof and waterproof. Now thats a bit cool.

Home Server

My personal favorite but that’s because I love to customize and play with different options. This can be very time consuming and sometimes frustration. Lots of options from just running a file server on your desktop to running a dedicated file server operating system like FreeNAS.

Summary

As I said i recommend offsite backup however failing that get some sort of backup that can survive a disaster. Either being flood, fire, earthquake, electricity spike.