Any reason not to use MS one drive to backup?

[Clariman]

Here is what I think my requirements and options are. Please comment ...

Some quick questions:

a) what's the size of the hard drive on your PC ....

2TB hard drive but is double the capacity of the one that was in there that got damaged

and how much are you using?

Are you 'aving a larf mate, I don't have any data since I lost it all! .

b) how much space are your personal files taking?

Having restored multiple old backups of various sorts 183GB is currently being used, including the OS. How does that relate to what my PC was before I lost the hard drive? I couldn't say for sure but my guess would have been around 300GB used.

c) how much of your personal data really needs to be secure/encrypted if on the cloud? E.g. spreadsheet with bank account details, obviously yes; photos of the family dog, not really...

Probably not a huge amount but I'd need to give it some thought. MS Money backup, lots of spreadsheets, some personal thoughts files (I used to type up how I felt about work and other issues to help me assess pros and cons of various actions, although I could probably delete these), stuff related to property investments etc.

C

[mc2fool]

and how much are you using?

Are you 'aving a larf mate, I don't have any data since I lost it all! .

b) how much space are your personal files taking?

Having restored multiple old backups of various sorts 183GB is currently being used, including the OS. How does that relate to what my PC was before I lost the hard drive? I couldn't say for sure but my guess would have been around 300GB used.

Ummm, ok, so that's the answer to the second part of (a) and no answer to (b) .... let's say 120GB of your current 183GB used is personal files and the other 63GB is Windows + installed software + system files.

c) how much of your personal data really needs to be secure/encrypted if on the cloud? E.g. spreadsheet with bank account details, obviously yes; photos of the family dog, not really...

Probably not a huge amount but I'd need to give it some thought. MS Money backup, lots of spreadsheets, some personal thoughts files (I used to type up how I felt about work and other issues to help me assess pros and cons of various actions, although I could probably delete these), stuff related to property investments etc.

Then it's almost certainly worth dividing out, and fair chance you'll be able to use the free 5GB from Sync.com (zero knowledge end to end encrypted cloud storage) for your "sensitive" stuff and bung the (much bigger) photos of the family dog etc onto OneDrive. It's what I do (except I use Google Drive instead of OneDrive for the insecure stuff, and I don't have a dog.)

How about the communications speeds? (I suspect I added that bit after you'd read my initial post).

[Infrasonic]

There's a MR features comparison table here for free versus £ home and other £ versions.
https://www.macrium.com/product-comparison

[Clariman]

How about the communications speeds? (I suspect I added that bit after you'd read my initial post).

Currently as follows:

Download 17.33 Mb/s
Upload 5.8 Mb/s

[mc2fool]

How about the communications speeds? (I suspect I added that bit after you'd read my initial post).

Currently as follows:

Download 17.33 Mb/s
Upload 5.8 Mb/s

Uh, what is that? It's fast for copper and slow for fibre....

Ok, and from the laptop to the NAS? Try copying some large file and timing it, and try that with it in various places, esp. if you're planning on putting the NAS in some far flung part of the house. The results you get may well influence the configuration and usage you'll decide on.

[Urbandreamer]

c) how much of your personal data really needs to be secure/encrypted if on the cloud? E.g. spreadsheet with bank account details, obviously yes; photos of the family dog, not really...

Probably not a huge amount but I'd need to give it some thought. MS Money backup, lots of spreadsheets, some personal thoughts files (I used to type up how I felt about work and other issues to help me assess pros and cons of various actions, although I could probably delete these), stuff related to property investments etc.

C

I would say that some serious thought is worthwhile. I'd start by asking if your data should EVER be considered a lump. Do you need last years photo's of the family dog instantly available? If not then store them on the NAS not the laptop. Spreadsheets tend not to take up much room, so it's not worth sorting the old ones out of the current ones. Talking books or videos, store all but the most recent on the NAS. Creative writing, well if you haven't accessed it in a year, probably NAS, or maybe not as it may take little room.

I get by with 250GB hard drives, but my NAS is a lot bigger. This makes things considerably cheaper since I like to run SSD for it's speed in my laptop.
Choosing a huge disk for a portable device I'm afraid is likely to be an entrenched habit rather than a considered opinion. If data is archived off then you are unlikely to ever run out of space.

Note this is different from talking backups. You still need to do that. The constant talk of backing up the entire partition is to easily keep paid for applications. I don't bother as I have none that ask for payment. However if you divide data and OS, you need only backup the OS when you install new apps or make changes. If you restore an old backup of win10 then you can download the updates to bring it to current condition. A fresh install of win10, rather than an upgrade, will likely create two partitions, C for the OS and D for the data.

Looking at the ideapad advertising spec's the top line is

If you love streaming music or binge watching videos online but don’t want to spend money on features you don’t need, the Ideapad 310 is the laptop for you.

Clearly intended for video's and music. Is that your main use Calriman? If so there is probably no need to store those files on your laptop most of the time. Find an old PC and somewhere to plug it in out of the way then install NAS software and a media server. Though of course your Sonos may already be doing that and save you the effort. Then stream the content from there. Simply copy a small amount of music or video back to the laptop when going on holiday.

[swill453]

If you keep stuff on the NAS and not the laptop, you then have the issue of backing up the NAS as well, which adds complexity.

I prefer to keep the master copy of everything on the PC, and back it up in multiple ways and locations.

Scott.

[Urbandreamer]

If you keep stuff on the NAS and not the laptop, you then have the issue of backing up the NAS as well, which adds complexity.

I prefer to keep the master copy of everything on the PC, and back it up in multiple ways and locations.

Scott.

Well, I don't have an issue. Or at least it's no effort for me.
My NAS is mirrored every night automatically.

I have chosen not to use cloud storage, however it wouldn't be too big a task for me to automate cloud backups. I googled how to for dropbox.
https://www.maketecheasier.com/set-up-b ... x-dropbox/

Each to their own, however I don't regard access speed as a huge issue for long term data storage and do regard speed and cost an issue for working storage. In particular the storage holding applications and the OS, though if you do video editing* or such you need it for that too.
Another poster argued for a second local disk in the original thread where the laptop was dropped. That would work well if possible. I don't think that it is with this laptop though.
Of course there does seem to be a presumption that the data is personal, rather than family data. My ebooks and audiobooks were stored on the NAS so that the family could access them.

In all things, it really depends upon what you are doing. Thinking about that can lead to more effective solutions. In many cases having a different tool depending upon what you are doing can make great sense. Some are happy with a small chromebook (tiny HD) with a more powerful computer for the heavy lifting.

*If doing serious video editing I would argue for a non portable machine as the cheapest most powerful solution.

[Clariman]

In answer to various questions that have arisen...

I don't have much audio and video on my laptop - I'm surprised that the Ideapad 310 was advertised that way. We stream music using Napster/Sonos but do have a library of about 300 CDs worth on the NAS drive which has nothing to do with the laptop.

I will definitely store all working files on the laptop's hard drive. The NAS, external hard drive and OneDrive are just potential backup locations.

I used to store camera photos on the hard drive and back up to CD or DVD. I think storing those on external drive and NAS, but not on laptop would make some sense. Since the days of mobile phones being the day to day camera, I've lost the habit of copying them to the hard drive but Google backs them up to the cloud anyway.

I think the idea to categorise data and back up appropriately makes sense too although I don't want to over complicate it.

C

[mc2fool]

• To automate the process with daily backups (or every few days)
• I'm not too bothered about creating a System Image because I can rebuild the systems myself using recovery USB (although this does take time).
• I'm not bothered about incremental backups, but would use them if a full daily backup was impractical e.g. for performance reasons.

A system image is a full backup and, yes, doing daily full backups will probably be impractical.

There's no technical reason why you couldn't do them, but you do, of course, have to have your laptop powered up and awake and able to access the backup medium continuously during a backup, and that could, depending on your configuration, take several hours.

While you might be happy to be constrained to having your laptop that way on, say, Sunday mornings, you probably won''t want to have those restrictions on it every day. So, the thing to do is to schedule the full backups for when its convenient to be continuously up and connected for a long(er) period, and use incrementals or differentials, which take (usually) much less time, in between.

If you determine what your effective transfer speeds are between your laptop and NAS we can take a guesstimate at how long it'll take for you.

[Clariman]

If you determine what your effective transfer speeds are between your laptop and NAS we can take a guesstimate at how long it'll take for you.

Thanks ... but why the NAS rather than the external hard drive which is directly attached to the laptop?

[mc2fool]

If you determine what your effective transfer speeds are between your laptop and NAS we can take a guesstimate at how long it'll take for you.

Thanks ... but why the NAS rather than the external hard drive which is directly attached to the laptop?

Well, (a) you said you wanted automatic backups and using an external drive requires you to do something, i.e. connect it to the laptop (unless it's permanently connected of course) and (b) you said you wanted to put the NAS in a far flung part of the house to lessen the chances of losing your backups to fire.

But anyway, you might as well test that too, it might influence your decision,

[Clariman]

Thanks mc2fool

When my laptop is in my home office (most of the time) it is attached to a docking station and so is the hard drive.

Yes, the NAS is in a different part of the house. I was just wondering what your reason was.

[mc2fool]

Yes, the NAS is in a different part of the house. I was just wondering what your reason was.

Just paying attention to what you'd said previously.

I had the same idea when I first set up my NAS and bought a 15 metre ethernet cable so I could put it at the far side of another room furthest away from the PC, but it ran at around a third of the speed of being in the same room on the end of a 3m cable (the 15m cable was a cheap one...). Thankfully I tried it out before I started drilling holes in the skirting, etc....