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Advice on back up, NAS, external HDD?

Tags:
  • NAS / RAID
  • External Hard Drive
  • Storage
  • Western Digital
October 5, 2014 11:30:10 AM

Hello.

A few years ago I was using a 1TB WD external disk for backing up my photos (I've been shooting in raw much it takes up a lot of space), videos etc.
And as that disk was starting to fill up I decided get a 2TB internal WD green (WD20EARS) and put it in an external Lacie HDD enclosure. What I did then was copy everything over from the 1TB disk so that both disks were identical, and whenever I wanted to back up something I plugged in both drives and copied the same files to the same folders on both disks.

A few months after that I had built a computer and decided to use my old (prebuilt, Packard Bell) computer for storage. So I bought another 2TB WD disk (WD20EARX) and put it in that computer.

So now when I back up my files I transfer the files to my external HDD and to the internal HDD in the other PC via the local network. And I never put anything on one disk only as I want them to be identical and would most likely forget to put the same files on the other drive later.

This way takes much time since I have to get a network cable for the old pc and also move one of my monitors cables to it. So I don't back up my files as often as I should.

Anyway, now I'm considering buying another HDD enclosure for that internal drive. USB 3.0 this time. The other one is 2.0.
But is this the best way to go? There are nas for room with two drives. I don't need to be able to acces them on the network though. I just back up my files and then turn them off again.
It would be nice to have them in RAID and just transfer the files once and never have to worry about forgetting some files or misplacing them on one of the drives.
But wouldn't it be less safe? I guess I could lose both drives if the nas would fail somehow?
But with two external disks I would both of them need to fail at the same time for me to lose the data.

I've never used a NAS before and I don't know if that would better than two external drives. I would appreciate some tips on this. others suggestions are more than welcome.

Thank you in advance.

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