Backup recommendations for small business using NAS

[Xander]

They've got a handful of workstations and get along fine with a simple NAS for file sharing. They used to just have a shared folder on one PC and it would back up to an external hard drive. I got them, at that point, to use two drives and swap them out while the main contact would take the alternate drive home with her.

On the NAS, they've got about 325GB in use right now but, with everything under one roof, are finally remembering that I recommended off-site storage. I know most services average around $.50/GB but want to be able to offer them at least 3 options.

I set up their NAS last year as a RAID 1 so it's mirroring. Is there any practical way in which you could swap out one of the two 2TB drives with another so that the one swapped out could then be taken away as off-site storage? Then swap it back in, get re-mirrored and lather-rinse-repeat? I'm just spitballing as they're not a wealthy company (but, at least, never squawk when it comes to paying my bill).

 

[mrapoc]

That would be a great idea for an business client I'm about to take on. No backups as present but a networked storage would be better than 5x portable USB drives.

Thinking about it you could get a hotswap nas....or even simpler get a nas that backups to a USB HDD? Then you can take the USB HDD each day/week off site?

That way no need to faff about with anti static bags and (almost) anyone can unplug/replug?

My synology backs up to a USB drive

 

[JustInspired]

I have clients with two portable usb drives that get rotated daily. Their NAS backs up on a schedule to whatever is plugged into its usb port. A usb cable is left plugged into the front of the NAS for this purpose. One of the people in the office is responsible for taking the drive away at the end of the day and switching it with yesterday's one.
I also have clients with two identical Synology NAS devices; one at the office and one at the owner's home. The office NAS backs up nightly to the remote NAS automatically and a report is emailed to them and me immediately afterwards.

 

[Martyn]

I agree with the external usb hard drives. Leave the raid 1 and have 2 x usb hard drives. I have this on one site and am just setting up another. The latest person is a home business with 2 pcs and the data is on a Synology nas. My client is going to take one drive offsite when he visits his mother once a week and leave it there to swap weekly.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I'd shy away from swapping HDDs in a NAS RAID....even with better "hot swap" units...they're not designed for weekly use....I'd not even want to trust monthly hot swaps over periods of time. Not to mention constant handling of the HDD itself...transport, etc.

Plenty of options with NAS's for offsite backup. Setup folder redirection on the desktops (guessing it's just peer to peer/workgroup)...plus the shared/mapped general purpose drive...and set it for offsite backup.

Or...as noted above, some NAS's have a backup utility that can be setup with an external USB.

 

[cyabro]

I always recommend 3 USB drives in rotation, that way there is always one off site,

 

[DataMedics]

Hot swapping drives like that is a bad idea. Very likely to kill them prematurely.

Personally I'd set up another offsite NAS such as a Synology that has the ability to be an Rsync target. Set it up with a No-IP account if you don't have a static IP. Then just set the other NAS to do a nightly or weekly backup to it. Plus with Synology's file versioning, even if something gets messed up and synced you can go back to a previous version like timebackup.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

How about another wd mycloud nas that the user keeps at home, map the old NAS as a drive to a system, and run a weekly backup to the mycloud? Not sure in practice how this would work, but an idea.

 

[Krilus]

Check out iDrive I found out about it from a podcast on Podnutz. $45 annually. If you sign up as a reseller you get 25% for as long as the account is active.


Cheers,

K.

 

[Xander]

I'm there tomorrow afternoon to clear off their list of "little things" that have built up. I'm mostly sure their NAS is a Dlink DIR-____ (but I'm not sure of what model number). I'll check to see what USB-based options it's got built in.

Overall, the USB backup will still most likely be their most cost-effective option but they'd have to remember to swap it out regularly.

Other thing I just thought of would be setting up an external hard drive at the client's home and using something like Bittorrent Sync to mirror the data from office to home device. That would be free, though it might chew through their bandwidth when syncing their multi-gig PST files.

 

[altrenda]

Crashplan Free would backup to someones computer at home.

 

[carrcomp]

Do you really want to use a free service in a business though?

 

[acscva]

Check out iDrive I found out about it from a podcast on Podnutz. $45 annually. If you sign up as a reseller you get 25% for as long as the account is active.


Cheers,

K.

I have been a reseller of theirs for several years. Great service. I signup all of my customers myself and charge to install and setup. Another trick with them is look at their comparison page and they typically have a special where they can get 50% off the first year of service also.

 

[Vicenarian]

Carbonite Pro will back up network shares if you map them as drives on a PC. Just install it, configure it to back up the mapped drives, ensure any odd filetypes are selected for backup, and voila!

 

[tek9]

Carbonite Pro will back up network shares if you map them as drives on a PC. Just install it, configure it to back up the mapped drives, ensure any odd filetypes are selected for backup, and voila!

Just a heads up that Carbonite does not backup NAS drives on Macs.