[bharanidharang]

Originally Posted by myavu

Yes, it is there.

Attachment 2016199

Thanks Myavu. When you do an add to cart, it creeps up to different pricing. However microsoft website has the pricing at 125 + gst

[Tucker48]

Originally Posted by Rehaan

Few add-ons:

1) A lot of people move their data to an external drive an call it a "BACKUP"! This is NOT a backup.

Moving data to external drive is a backup. Only cloud storage salesman (I'm not saying you are but from wherever you got this info) will not call it a backup. Where do cloud storage backup our data? They too store it on disk drives but might be in multiple locations.
Backup the data on a external drive once in a month or just connect it the computer once in a month. Try to keep the drive away from heavy magnetic field. The drive will last decades (anyways one will need to upgrade to a bigger drive every 10 years or so).
There is not a single option for 100% safe data backup. Cloud storage can fail too if their data storage centers are overwhelmed by catastrophes.

[myavu]

Originally Posted by bharanidharang

Thanks Myavu. When you do an add to cart, it creeps up to different pricing. However microsoft website has the pricing at 125 + gst

Please check with the Customer Care.

Also if you go ahead with Microsoft website purchase you are eligible for a 6 months free subscription.

Offer available to new Microsoft 365 Business Basic commercial customers in the US between April 7th, 2020 and June 30th, 2020, and all other markets between April 10th, 2020 and June 30th, 2020 and applies to first year only.

Originally Posted by Holyghost

Does OneDrive provide 1TB plan at Rs. 125?

I am using it for last 2 years flawlessly. Earlier the Plan was Office 365 Business Essentials and now it had been changed to Microsoft 365 Business Basic.

[Guite]

There has been many talk of life of drives. I still have a Seagate FreeagentGo 320gb. Must be close to 10 years by now. I used it sparingly, connected may be once in two months on an average. Still using it.

Originally Posted by DaptChatterjee

Google drive space included mails (gmail), backup of whatsapp, contacts etc and photos that are synced to photos app. Open google drive and click on storage inside the sandwich button, you'll find the usage divided in three parts, drive, mail and photos.

Thanks for the info. Must be Whatsapp backup which is taking up so much space. We have been using it to share lots of files during this work from home. I will check it out.

Originally Posted by Storm2.0

I'm asking this considering I get a new external hard drive and don't need the older one, or I sell my laptop or phone to get a new one.

Ccleaner app has drive wiper to clean free space. This will remove traces of deleted files information.

[Rehaan]

Originally Posted by DudeWithaFiat

I keep my important documents backed up at Google Drive, Gmail inbox and and couple of external hard drives.

Yep, that's more than good enough

Like I mentioned, it's all about redundancy and longevity (which cloud automatically gives you).

Originally Posted by DudeWithaFiat

However, HDDs aren't as [bad] as Backblaze says. If you are using your external HDDs once a month, it should last a few years fine. External hard-drives does not have as much wear-and-tear as the ones attached to your computer. That said, shelving your external HDD for many months unused may kill it too.

Backblaze I see is a Cloud storage provider, you cannot expect them to say good things about external HDDs

This part I will disagree with you on.

The reason they are saying anything about Hard Drives is because they are using hard drives.

The data is from ONLY the drives in their data center. All 129,959+ drives that they have bought and use and monitor daily.

If they wanted to make cloud storage sound good, they wouldn't be telling readers that they have ~1,400 hard drive failures per year!

Originally Posted by Tucker48

Moving data to external drive is a backup.

No. MOVING data to an external drive is NOT a backup.

COPYING data to an external drive is a backup.

Originally Posted by Tucker48

Where do cloud storage backup our data? They too store it on disk drives but might be in multiple locations.

If you read my post you'll see I've mentioned exactly this: >>

Originally Posted by Rehaan

Also, for long-term back-ups, the Cloud is best, since they theyselves then backup your data at MULTIPLE places, and keep moving it between drives etc.

[digitalnirvana]

@blackwasp I currently have the Google 500GB monthly storage plan which is shared across family members. It costs more than the OneDrive Rs 125 plan.

How do I go about migrating to OneDrive please? Is there a simple list of steps somewhere? Also, does OneDrive back stuff up automatically from mobiles - or is there a way to enable it at least using any 3rd party apps?

[yosbert]

Originally Posted by Holyghost

For backups, I have a 8TB QNAP NAS at home sync'd to 4TB OneDrive using QNAP CloudSync App. The NAS Sync is setup to Sync only once in 2 weeks with the OneDrive cloud to give me just enough time to take it offline in case of ransomware attacks.

I was thinking of setting up a NAS at home. Can you please share some hardware details of your NAS setup. That will definitely help in my research.
Thanks.

[blackwasp]

Originally Posted by digitalnirvana

How do I go about migrating to OneDrive please? Is there a simple list of steps somewhere? Also, does OneDrive back stuff up automatically from mobiles - or is there a way to enable it at least using any 3rd party apps?

There are some apps that will do this for you, but if you have only one account, I will recommend you do it manually.

Step 1 - Download data in max 100 GB sizes (or folders if you have it sorted on GDrive) to your PC (can be larger provided you have enough space / bandwidth to handle it).

Step 2 - Download the OneDrive desktop app and sync these files (don't upload from a web browser as that tends to break connection from my experience).

Step 3 - The family members would need to have access to the folders using links (you can share folders in OneDrive using email / links. For links, never use the option "anyone with the link can edit". This is the hardest part as you would have to get people you share files with to be familiar with it.

Sadly OneDrive won't be able to back up all your system data automatically from your phones. You will still need the Google account for that. However, you can use this app to back up files and pictures from your phone to the OneDrive.

Hope this is easy to understand. If not, let me know, I will share some links to the exact steps I have mentioned above, but with pictures / screenshots.

[yosbert]

Originally Posted by GTO

NOTE: All my backups are encrypted (including Acronis).

Can you please elaborate a bit on how you encrypt your backups. Sorry if this is a noob question.

[Holyghost]

Originally Posted by yosbert

I was thinking of setting up a NAS at home. Can you please share some hardware details of your NAS setup. That will definitely help in my research.
Thanks.

I do not know much about the latest NAS and its availability since mine was setup way back in 2012. QNAP and Synology used to be highly recommended for home usage. Mine is a QNAP 219P+ with 2 Bay hot swappable disk slots. Initially it came with 1TB x 2 drives which I later upgraded to 4TB x 2 disks few years back. It is configured with RAID 1 and is also Sync'd to OneDrive using CloudSync app. The collection of apps available in QNAP app store is really good and you could find an app just for anything. The NAS also has CloudAccess and I can access my NAS from anywhere in the world and can also share folders to anyone through internet. But I don't use that feature considering the security vulnerabilities.

In the current age, I do not know whether a NAS is required when we consider the cheap cloud storages. As long as you have data backed up locally to a secondary drive like a portable HDD, the cloud storage is much more convenient. I use the NAS only as a tertiary local backup and 100% of my streaming and data access is done directly from OneDrive. Just remember when you have TBs of data, you should always have a local backup copy as well, either on a NAS or Portable HDD. Restoring 5TB data from cloud after a HDD failure is not an easy task.

[yosbert]

Originally Posted by Holyghost

In the current age, I do not know whether a NAS is required when we consider the cheap cloud storages. As long as you have data backed up locally to a secondary drive like a portable HDD, the cloud storage is much more convenient. I use the NAS only as a tertiary local backup and 100% of my streaming and data access is done directly from OneDrive. Just remember when you have TBs of data, you should always have a local backup copy as well, either on a NAS or Portable HDD. Restoring 5TB data from cloud after a HDD failure is not an easy task.

Thanks for the details. That was helpful.
As you and many others have pointed out, NAS might be a little overkill in today's age of cheap cloud storage. However I am a little paranoid about putting vital personal info out on the cloud. Hence I was thinking of a RAID setup for such personal data. Photos and non critical data will of course go on the cloud. Another advantage of having a NAS would be that I need not worry about the storage size of any new devices I buy and all my data would be centralized.

[R2D2]

Data backups is a subject close to my heart. Glad it came up as a separate thread. Thanks Blackwasp.

Anyways, I have not had much luck with my hard drives, a lesson first learned back in 1996/97 when I lost almost all my personal data from a 170 MB (that's right, MB) Quantum Fireball hard disk that died on me. Well, I could recover some of it as I had backed up some of the stuff. That was the lesson that got me going about backups on the venerable floppy drives, first the 5 1/4" and then 3.5" floppies that were the rage in those days. Floppies as most of us from that era know were not exactly the most reliable of storage media. In the early 2000s I got my self a CD burner and started backups to a CD-RW, ~700 MB/disc which was quite sufficient for those days.

The real shock came in when my work laptop drive accidentally died and I was livid with rage and despondent. Luckily that thing came back to life and I was able to just about transfer the data to my company's server when it gave a strange krrrrr sound and died completely. That experience was the one that set me up for backing up data without fail.

I am now extremely particular about backups, multiple backups to multiple cloud providers, to 2 NAS boxes, Netgear 24 TB and a Synology 8 TB at home and to an external USB 3 8 TB drive. Daily system (C drive) backups are performed by Macrium Reflect the best backup software I have used and I have used quite a few. Bvckup and Goodsync do the syncing to local USB drives and to the NAS respectively. Duplicati, a free backup software is recommended but with caveats. It backs up data to the cloud in an encrypted form. If you backup to ANY cloud provider you must use encryption. And back up to multiple providers (google drive, dropbox, backblaze, etc etc) the choice is yours.

Software used:

a) Encryption - Cryptomator, Boxcryptor used on cloud drives and USB flash drives
b) Backups - Macrium Reflect Home, Bvcup, Goodsync, Duplicati

I encourage you chaps to try Macrium Reflect free for imaging your hard disks. I have used nearly all the major disk imaging software packages (Acronis, Shadowprotect, Aomei etc) but this is the one I have been with since 2012.

PS - Though I have a BRD drives I do not use optical data any longer, too cumbersome.

[Tucker48]

Originally Posted by Rehaan

No. MOVING data to an external drive is NOT a backup.

COPYING data to an external drive is a backup.



If you read my post you'll see I've mentioned exactly this: >>

Backup word in itself is self explanatory. Even the post you asked me to refer to (which is a different post to which I replied), you yourself have used the same word 'moving'.
The concern I was addressing that external drives if operated properly is the best backup option considering the cost factor as well whereas it was ridiculed as not so intelligent option.

[R2D2]

One more point on this subject - SSDs die too and in my case, it chose to do it suddenly. One of my home PCs could not recognize an attached SSD, which was working perfectly well the previous day, and I had to replace it with a spare I had at home. All data restored in 15 mins and I was up and running. My PCs are set to automatically run incremental backups at least once a day to local storage and to cloud storage + USB manually when I am using the PC.


So, while SSDs are physically way faster and tougher compared to spinners but you need to back 'em up too.

[R2D2]

Just so you guys know MS has dropped the price of a family subscription that includes 6 members. Earlier it was 5200/year + GST now it is 5200 inclusive of GST, a saving of approx Rs 936. Each member gets all the standard MS applications + 1 TB Onedrive cloud storage. Really worth the money @ Rs 867/year/person.

PS - Someone asked about the most secure online sync storage (not backup like Backblaze and Crashplan), I think it is the Canadian Sync dot com. It is a zero-knowledge provider.