While organizing the photos and videos on my computer recently, a question suddenly crossed my mind. Is it really necessary for home users to buy a NAS?
That’s up to each individual to decide.
Backup Definition - What is a data backup?
Do you have other ways to back up your data?
I have my data backed up in different ways. Some is on CDs, both of my WDMYCLOUDS, my other computers, USB Thumb drives. My main computer, a desktop, has both a SSD and a HDD. The HDD is a data drive.
All my apps, and other data is very important to me, so I have many ways to back it up.
Your backup strategy is very comprehensive. Combining optical discs, WD My Cloud, computer hard drives, and USB flash drives certainly helps minimize the risk of data loss. If someone who is just starting to organize a large collection of family photos and videos had to choose, do you think a NAS would be a worthwhile investment, or would a standard external hard drive be sufficient?
I suggest you look at the WD web site and what products they offer. Look at what each one provides. See what will provide what you need it to do.
I like my WDMYCLOUD 2nd generation because I can access it from any where.
You need to consider the “value” of the content you are storing. By “value” I don’t mean money, I mean the impact if you suddenly lost everything. Bear in mind that having a NAS does NOT remove the need to backup your content. The NAS is just 1 piece of tech. While it may tolerate and recover from the loss of a single drive (perhaps more depending on the raid level), it is still susceptible to other hardware failures, power outages, environmental issues (dust, heat, humidity), etc.
Without writing too much more, you need to consider capacity (how much you need to store), access (who needs to access the content, from where), security (limit access to some level for certain groups/people), redundancy (tolerate component failure), upgradeability (can add storage/memory without buying new device). Finally, affordability. Big systems cost big money but reduce the risk of loss.
So a large USB drive for storage and a DVD writer for backup may be sufficient. It was for me for quite a while. As my content grew in size and importance, I began employing other tech to access and preserve it.
Currently, my own MyCloud (an old EX4) has 4 drives in Raid5. It gets primary power from an APC UPS. It services as my primary storage. I have an older Netgear NAS than serves strictly for backups. It is scheduled to turn on, backup my EX4, then shut down. Both NAS’s have a USB drive on them. The USBs have backup content that is basically irreplaceable (family photos, important documents, etc.). In the event of an emergency, I can simply grab one of the USBs and bug out. USB content is also backup to various clouds (Google Drive, Drop Box, iCloud, etc.)
So my “tiered” backup gets pretty much everything at the first level to my Netgear, then more critical stuff gets backed up elsewhere (usb drives), and finally the most critical stuff gets sent to the cloud. So for the most important stuff, I have somewhere around 4 to 5 copies on different devices, in different locations.
