Backing up a NAS is a bit of a complicated endeavor, and it’s not really as simple as just plugging in an external drive and saving your data.
If you have a NAS, then chances are you’ve been using it to store all kinds of important data. Maybe you have a large collection of movies and TV shows, or something like NextCloud set up as a Google Photos alternative. No matter what, though, you’ll want to make sure that data is kept safe, which is why you should protect your data by backing up your NAS.
Technically, thanks to redundancy in NAS, you should already be protected against catastrophic drive failure. Redundancy in a NAS refers to having multiple drives that hold the same data. For example, a 3TB NAS should have two 3TB drives, both of which house data. When one fails, the system can warn you, and you can get your data off safely, though not everyone has a setup like this. If you don’t, you definitely should look into investing in an extra couple of drives, and it would likely be a better investment than just backing up your entire NAS to external storage.
If, however, you still want to back up essential data on your NAS, then the best option for you is likely a cloud service. Typically, those who operate a NAS operate a 3-2-1 rule for storing copies of data.
The 3-2-1 rule for backing up data
The 3-2-1 rule for data backup is the following:
- There should be three copies of the data
- On two separate media
- With one of them being off-site
So, for example, a NAS that uses two distinct drives for redundancy already fulfills steps 1 and 2. You have three copies of the data, one on each drive and another from the origin device. If you want to be extra careful (as some may argue that the data being stored in RAID does not constitute two separate copies), then you can also buy an external drive and back up your files automatically to it.
However, addressing the need to keep a backup off-site is the hardest, and for most people, that will mean using a cloud service.
How to back up your NAS to the cloud
If you want to save money, then the best way to back up your NAS to the cloud is to triage the data that you care about and make sure that it’s the only data that you back up. For example, many people might not care too much about backing up movies and TV shows, but they may care about the photos and videos.
The best and most cost-effective option for most people will be Azure Archive. It costs up to $1 per month per terabyte, and the only downside is that you can only access the data stored there infrequently. But that’ll be fine for backups. AWS Glacier is another similar system that offers a large amount of storage for cheap, as, just like with Azure Archive, you only access the data infrequently. You’ll have to pay to download your files though, which will differ between services.
Another option with instructions that are easy to follow if you use something like TrueNAS is Backblaze B2, which has instructions for integrating with TrueNAS, but it can be a little bit more expensive at $5 per terabyte. You’ll also spend money to pull those files from the server if you want to download a backup, which comes in at $10 per terabyte downloaded.
Backing up your NAS is important
It’s a good idea to backup your NAS data, but make sure you do it in a way that makes sense, doesn’t cost you too much, and is easy to maintain. An automated system that links with a cloud service is definitely going to be one of the easiest options possible, but you’ll need to pick out which service looks right for you and get a quote for the cost of the storage that you’re looking for.
If you really want to go with a local backup, then any great external hard drive will work for long-term data storage, or if you want it to be quickly accessible, then any of the best portable SSDs will either.