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I had a recent incident that made me question how I back up my files.  My current setup is 2 internal hard drives setup in RAID and then 3 external hard drives; one located by my computer, one in a fireproof safe, and the third offsite.  I randomly manually update the external hard drives by deleting all the files on them and copying/pasting all current files from the internal drive.

The incident involved me accidentally deleting all my photos on the internal drives.  Not a huge deal since I have the backups.  However since I randomly back up the external drives and had been slacking on this I lost about a months worth of work organizing, processing photos etc.

So this incident has prompted 2 questions;

RAID configuration -  With my recent incident the RAID configuration didn’t help since when I accidentally deleted the folder everything was deleted from both RAID drives.  This makes me question how much value is in the RAID configuration other than one of the drives failing.  I feel a better solution would be having 2 drives and setting up an automated backup to one of the drives.  This eliminates making the same error on both drives like I did and also provides a second internal backup regularly updated in case one drive fails.

Automated Backup -  I need to find a way to automate the backup of files so recently edited files/changes are done as they happen.  Also the time it is starting to take to deleted and recopy all files to the external drive is becoming cumbersome (4-5 hours).  What are others using for automated backup?  It appears windows has a file backup option does anyone use this?

Rather than deleting all the files on them and copying/pasting all current files from the internal drive I recommend using Synchtoy 2 (or Goodsynch) to echo the main storage drive to your backup storage drive. You can also do the backup to your external storage drives the same way. With synchtoy 2 just make sure you use the echo option rather than synchronize or contribute. This is vastly quicker than your current method.

Another recommendation for GoodSync. Deleting and recopying is unnecessary.

I have a raid unit but also use large external drives, one stored offsite. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to do the backups. It creates a 'safety" net if you deleted something you didn't want to, and you can schedule backups. It will also email you if you like to tell you the backup was successful.

I put in my vote for goodsync.

Sorry to learn of your problem Aaron. I learned a long time ago that RAID is not a good back up solution. In addition to the issue you reported RAID will also automatically copy any errors, corruptions or other bad stuff that gets on your primary drive. I, too, use Goodsync to backup regularly to external drives, then back that up to yet another external that is stored at a colleague's office. I update the off site back up when ever I do something major or every 3 months which ever is first. I should probably do this more often.

Raid 5 for operating storage disk. Backed up to a second raid 5 drive with roll back using Genie pro. The roll back feature allows you to go back to a version before the file became corrupted. This is then backed up periodically to two large single disks. One stored off site in fire proof data safe and the other stored on site in fire proof data safe. Knock on wood.

Hi,

I just hook up an external drive and drag all the files over to it. I do this once a month with two drives. One stays at home and the other is stored offsite.

In between backups, I backup to a flash drive.

I've been doing this for decades with no problems.

Have Fun,
Jeff