Windows 10 Laptop Question

hypoxia wrote:
Perhaps I should start another thread but since you are on the subject of RAID, NAS etc., what is the best way to backup the laptop which travels in the camper for months at a time? I have been thinking of having two portable hard drives. I would copy an image to each?? The laptop has a 2TB SS drive.

The "popular" answer now days is to the "cloud".

I am NOT a "fan" of the "cloud" stuff, I like to keep full personal control on my data and who has access to it.

So, for myself, all things cloud is a no go, but you will get other opinions to the contrary on that.

In the case of laptops, yes, external drives make a fine backup system, USB or a NAS can work depending on the software and what you are backing up..

You can get imaging software like Macrium reflect free that will make a "image" or "snapshot" of your entire PC hard drive. This basically backups up not only your data, but your OS and programs..

The advantage here is in case of drive failure, virus, malware or even in the event your gets hit by ransom ware you can simply reimage your hard drive and be back up and running in a matter of an hr or so..

Disadvantage of most imaging software is you may or may not be able to pick and choose what data to restore and your last image may not have had the most recent data..

But, in the light of MS Win10 update hack jobs, I highly recommend making entire drive image backups are a must.

Generally drive images are in a highly compressed form so unless you have your 2TB laptop completely full a 2TB external drive will fit multiple backups on it.

You can implement a two drive process, alternating the next backup image on the opposite external drive for safety, just rotate between the two drives..

If you want to up your game, then look for external USB drives which have two drives built in, make sure they are setup as a RAID 1 which is a mirrored set.. The drive enclosure will read and write those two drives at the same time.. This automatically creates a backup of your backup..

NAS is also a good choice, some NAS units have Multiple drives, Wifi on them and all with have a hard wired network connection.. You may need to study up on them to see how they may work for your situation and backing up via drive imaging may or may not be possible.. I haven't tried one those for that purpose. Be sure that if you go NAS that it can offer RAID 1 level for two drives and in the case of three or more RAID5 or higher..

RAID 5 requires 3 drives, data is split and striped across the drives with parity (helps with rebuilding the drive array). RAID 5 gives higher speed access with security of parity bit unlike RAID 0 (RAID 0 does data stripes but with no parity bit if one drive fails ALL data is lost). Downside of RAID 5 is you only get available space of tow of the three drives (which is why folks tend to use RAID 0)..

There are more RAID combos above RAID 5 but not all NAS units support those configurations..

Something else to consider is some NAS units have removable drive sleds.. Those are nice in the event of drive failure, pull the dead drive, insert new drive and the NAS will rebuild the drive array without the need to power down.