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[Chunkers]

I have a couple of Synology NAS which I use for domestic / family data storage and backup, they are great.  We currently have no Cloud storage - but I am re-thinking this, hence the enquiry.

I am interested to know what other people do to keep their families personal data secure and looking for recommendations for cross-platform secure backup, user friendly cloud storage with family options.  I have come the conclusion for us that data privacy is moot really, Google and Amazon already know everything about us and my family really seem to prioritise convenience, so consequently I am less worried about it than I used to be but would prefer to manage it as best I can.

Our family consists of 4 adults who move around a lot (two University age children and I am often abroad for work) and we are split down the middle, 2 use Android / Windows devices and 2 Apple / iOS users. I have two NAS in the house in different locations.  Years ago our house was struck by lightning and we lost a bunch of data, it destroyed several devices and since then we have been a bit paranoid.  Our storage solution needs to be easy to use with cross platform apps, Synology does this quite well but I think could be better.

• A DS920 is our main storage, video, photos and our phones, it also hosts music and runs our security cameras so it is online most of the time. It has 2Tb used, probably half of which is stuff like music which I probably would not classify as critical, it has 10Tb of storage.
  
• A DS214+ is a backup for the critical stuff, it has copies of the family photos but not the other stuff as it only has 2Tb of storage, it works fine but the drives and support are aging.

I would estimate the power consumption of both to be more or less 60W, so an estimated annual cost of up to £180 at 34p/Kwh. This is likely to go up, obviously.  With power prices going up, it seems like an obvious time to switch at least one of them off and instead use a Cloud backup which is almost certainly more robust (if a bit less private)

I also like the idea of a service which the family can also separately use for backup and as additional storage for their devices (phones, laptops etc), my phone constantly nags me that I have run out of cloud storage even though I have it switched off ...

Currently Google One looks attractive as it works with most things, I can get 2 Tb for about £80 / year,

• What do you guys do?
• Whats a good resource to get objective recommendations or reviews?

As an aside we also run a TV / home media server which I now estimate is costing about £300/year - holy cow!
In other news, the list function in html seems a bit broken - no big deal .... 

Whoopeee! 

C

[XGS_Is_On]

I use Google for other reasons than just straight backup however the download and upload speeds are horrible.

Backblaze might be exactly what you're looking for and promo codes are usually readily available.

https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup.html

You can shove everything on there if you so desire. They are a massive purchaser of spinning rust and don't care how much of it you use.

[Chunkers]

Backblaze might be exactly what you're looking for and promo codes are usually readily available.

Thanks! I'll check them out

[vic0239]

I use Backblaze B2 for my cloud backups. It's quite inexpensive, I have about 550GB uploaded and the monthly charge is less than $3US, although there are other transaction charges is you use some of the other features. These are all explained on the website linked to above under the B2 Cloud Storage heading.

The Synology Hyper Backup application can be configured to access Backblaze storage, although it is pretty slow ~10MB/s, as I think it is single threaded. I use Duplicacy for my backups (mostly from my MAC), but also have it installed on the NAS. Duplicacy is multi-threaded so can give a better throughput ~40MB/s with 20 threads for example.

https://duplicacy.com/

[Alex Atkin UK]

The problem with Backblaze is the cheap option is not intended as normal cloud storage, its for backups only and if you need to recover you have to do a FULL recovery, not incremental.  It seems to be a last-resort kind of service.  You're also not supposed to use it with a NAS, its meant to be for client backups only. (a curious distinction given I backup my clients to the NAS for that purpose and its those backups I'd like to have a secondary backup of)

Cloud storage would also be a pretty horrible way to store my movies/TV shows as part of the reason is to have them local and fully accessibly without using the Internet.  Plus who knows if they will start scanning for "high seas" copies in your cloud storage, they're not going to care that I only have that stuff because I can't obtain it any other way in that quality, or stuff I bought but had to obtain DRM free copies.

I'm also not sure your estimates of power consumption is right, given my 8600k server with 50TB of storage, main switch, router, Litebeam, WiFi AP, two monitors for the CCTV, all combined comes out at 135W average according to the UPS.  That said I removed my CCTV DVR from the UPS and the consumption isn't showing any different, so there may be some inaccuracy in its measurements (I suspect it rounds up/down by 5W or so and its averaged over a certain time).

Also consider that other than on hot summer days, that electricity usage is being converted to heat.  If you reduce your electricity use, some of that will be offset in gas usage if you have gas heating.

[vic0239]

The problem with Backblaze is the cheap option is not intended as normal cloud storage, its for backups only and if you need to recover you have to do a FULL recovery, not incremental.  It seems to be a last-resort kind of service. 

Using a backup client such as Duplicacy enables versioning and you can choose what to recovery down to file level.

You're also not supposed to use it with a NAS, its meant to be for client backups only.

Strange when Backblaze themselves have published a guide for using with both Synology Hyper Backup and Cloud Sync.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Strange when Backblaze themselves have published a guide for using with both Synology Hyper Backup and Cloud Sync.

I think I was looking at Personal Backup as B2 Cloud Storage was a lot more expensive, but I also wonder if I miscalculated the cost.

[Chunkers]

I'm also not sure your estimates of power consumption is right, given my 8600k server with 50TB of storage, main switch, router, Litebeam, WiFi AP, two monitors for the CCTV, all combined comes out at 135W average according to the UPS.  That said I removed my CCTV DVR from the UPS and the consumption isn't showing any different, so there may be some inaccuracy in its measurements (I suspect it rounds up/down by 5W or so and its averaged over a certain time).

Also consider that other than on hot summer days, that electricity usage is being converted to heat.  If you reduce your electricity use, some of that will be offset in gas usage if you have gas heating.

Good point, I based it off the quoted average power consumption in reviews but it might well be a bit off.  I have power monitor of my own I might try - tbh though I think the conclusions will be similar even if I am 20% out

If electricity gets up to 52p / Kwh after the price cap ends then it makes a lot of things look different .... even solar might finally make sense 

[Alex Atkin UK]

I think its worth a premium for local copies of things personally, ideally you'd use cloud storage as an extra backup anyway for anything you can't bear to lose.

I mean if you can't afford the electric bill your files are still there even if you can't access them, if you can't afford cloud storage then it gets deleted.  I'm just extremely wary of trusting my files to some random provider, even if I trust Backblaze more than Google.

[vic0239]

I'm just extremely wary of trusting my files to some random provider, even if I trust Backblaze more than Google.

Quite, that's why I don't use the Backblaze built-in encryption, but encrypt the data before transmission. The storage is then just a huge bucket of nonsense where you can store whatever you like.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Quite, that's why I don't use the Backblaze built-in encryption, but encrypt the data before transmission. The storage is then just a huge bucket of nonsense where you can store whatever you like.

Its what I was thinking actually.  Might just backup my Firefox and Thunderbird profiles there using the free 10G.

[gt94sss2]

• What do you guys do?

As a DS920+ user, I hope that your estimates on power consumption are incorrect!

Re: cloud storage - have you considered Microsoft 365 (was Office 365)?

You get 6 user accounts, each with 1Tb of OneDrive cloud storage (which is possible to share but not combine into one)

Its often for sale at around £45/year - for instance 15 months (12 months + 3 free) is currently available for this price at Argos - see https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/microsoft-365-family-6-people-and-mcafee-unlimited-devices-4072320

You can also 'stack' up to 5 years of subscriptions..

[jelv]

I've recently bought a new QNAP NAS as support for my original one has ended. To reduce power usage, what I've done is set up the new NAS to sync all data to the old one once a day and I've set up a schedule on the old one so that it powers up for an hour once a day to allow the sync to run.

[XGS_Is_On]

Reading Backblaze documentation they have no way of knowing what you're storing or accessing it. This actually benefits Backblaze. If they have any way of knowing what you're storing they become responsible for it in some jurisdictions. Zero security risk unless the client is compromised, though equally the software on a home NAS may be compromised.

It's a backup solution. You want easy access to files and are always online use One Drive or Google Drive. You want things always available you hold them locally.

I use a combination depending on what I need available and when. Backups in a cold cloud store, occasionally accessed files in a warm cloud store, things accessed more frequently or unsuitable for warm cloud storage are local, and there really isn't that much of it. Nearly all of my storage is local backups of machines and an NFS share for VMWare to duplicate customers who use such SANs.

[jelv]

I also use a combination. Everything is kept on the NAS, but some directories I want to be accessible online when out and about are synced to Google Drive by the NAS.