The economics of NAS servers and other backup options

[chagzuki]

shouldn't be that slow for 500gb in time machine - last time I did a full backup of about that much data it was maybe 4-6 hours. What's the connection from the mac to the nas - all wired, or do you have the mac on wifi?

All wired, but it's the encryption that's taking the time. I'm also doing a Time Machine backup to USB via USB 3.0 and the encryption aspect is taking days... it appears to separate the process into two parts, copying the data and then encrypting, the former being quite fast and the latter taking forever. That's what's making me think that leaving the NAS to do the encryption aspect would make more sense, unless the processor on this model is too feeble and it takes way longer.

[lunardigs]

shouldn't be that slow for 500gb in time machine - last time I did a full backup of about that much data it was maybe 4-6 hours. What's the connection from the mac to the nas - all wired, or do you have the mac on wifi?

All wired, but it's the encryption that's taking the time. I'm also doing a Time Machine backup to USB via USB 3.0 and the encryption aspect is taking days... it appears to separate the process into two parts, copying the data and then encrypting, the former being quite fast and the latter taking forever. That's what's making me think that leaving the NAS to do the encryption aspect would make more sense, unless the processor on this model is too feeble and it takes way longer.

I'd agree, if your information isn't very sensitive, let the NAS do it's native disk encryption.

[uOpt]

There is a huge advantage of backup-to-NAS compared to backup-to-HD: memory corruption protection.

If you have a memory corrupting malfunction on the primary computer then such memory corruption can (or will over time) corrupt the filesystem on the backup drive. Just like on the primary drive. Memory errors allow any data to be corrupted, even data you didn't touch.

If instead you backup to a NAS then you can only corrupt files (on the backup) you actually changed on the primary. Because filesystem metadata is managed by the 2nd computer. If you then use snapshots on the backup filesystem you can recover from memory corruption on the primary computer.

[zvenx]

I back up to both NAS drives and to more traditional USB attached/internal hard drives.

NAS of course won't be as fast as a USB 3 attached hard drive (well I have never had that experience).

And NAS's can be more expensive, but.. their recommended drives are supposedly longer MTBF if you are using a NAS drive, but more importantly for me, it makes me sharing stuff between my network,which has a pc and several macs so easy. And even if my studio is off I can easily access project files for clients from any computer or smart phone that is on...
That for me is priceless.
rsp

[chagzuki]

For some reason I'm not getting forum notifications, didn't see anyone had replied. Interesting point about data corruption. I'm liking having the NAS so far, although I've not done a great deal with it yet. But just having Windows backup turned on gives some peace of mind, and I'm about to migrate from a faulty laptop to the warranty replacement, and I think the process will be made less stressful by having the NAS.

[chagzuki]

Does anyone have any advice for choosing a camera to go with Synology Surveillance Station? I'm hoping something very cheap will work fine for simple requirements.

[BertKoor]

There is a huge advantage of backup-to-NAS compared to backup-to-HD: memory corruption protection.

If you have a memory corrupting malfunction on the primary computer then such memory corruption can (or will over time) corrupt the filesystem on the backup drive. Just like on the primary drive. Memory errors allow any data to be corrupted, even data you didn't touch.

If instead you backup to a NAS then you can only corrupt files (on the backup) you actually changed on the primary. Because filesystem metadata is managed by the 2nd computer. If you then use snapshots on the backup filesystem you can recover from memory corruption on the primary computer.

Perhaps it's just a language thing, but I fail to see how this actually works.
Got any links to an elaborate explanation of this phenomena?

[jdnz]

Does anyone have any advice for choosing a camera to go with Synology Surveillance Station? I'm hoping something very cheap will work fine for simple requirements.

At work using unifi flex g3 - small, price is right and we can power them over af PoE

[nIGhT-SoN]

Depending on how much performance is needed from the NAS, you could also go with a Raspberry Pi board, like 4 model B with 4/8GB ram and use it as a server. I actually have something like that with a 1TB hdd attached, but I'm using it in a home studio for backing-up pictures from my phone, files from my PC via Samba. There is software to auto upload stuff, like nextcloudpi, but for me this is more than enough.

There are options to use RAID and SSDs. If you are curios, you can check this youtube channel - , there are lots of videos about this stuff on youtube.

My setup can do 100-110MB/s over a 1Gbps network, which is well within the specs.

This way you have more flexibility, though there is more tinkering, so keep that in mind.

PS. I'm running a Raspberry Pi 4 model B with 2GB ram and it's more than enough for this and DNS server (Pi-Hole).

[echosystm]

Any on-site backup isn't a backup, IMO. I use BorgBase.

- Zero knowledge (not just encrypted at rest)
- Append-only
- Fast compression
- Deduplicated at the block level

Restic does some things better than Borg, but I couldn't find any reputable hosting and I couldn't be bothered maintaining a server.

I use Time Machine for fast disaster recovery, but I don't consider that to be a backup.