Simple Backup for Customers

[YeOldeStonecat]

So many will welcome the infrastructure overhaul that got passed!
Although todays cellular works well til then.
Satellite, yeah, wishy washy...familiar with from my boating.

 

[britechguy]

Or having one plugged into the computer at the time of a power surge, so that both get cooked....how handy is that backup now?

Serious question, sans any snark: In your entire career, how many instances of this happening have you encountered?

I've had zero, and couldn't, even in my wildest dreams, think I'd ever have more than 10. This is one of those things that just happens so seldom that it's not something that is, in my opinion, worth considering. All the more so if you have a residential client who will never consider cloud backup. They need something, and I'd certainly not be concerning them about power surges beyond using a good surge suppressor.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@britechguy I deal with electrical damage at least 3 times a year, the more rural the environment the worse it gets. The only way to manage it is good UPSs, surge strips are largely worthless.

 

[britechguy]

I deal with electrical damage at least 3 times a year, the more rural the environment the worse it gets.

Three times per year cannot be considered "common," but it's still way more frequent than I've ever seen here "back east." You all have more, and more frequent, significant electrical storms in AZ than is typical here.

Again, I wouldn't expect anyone with a lick of common sense to be sitting on their computer (if it's not a laptop and running on battery power) during an electrical storm, let alone taking a backup during one. And that's the context I was thinking of. I have never even heard of someone "being zapped" when sitting and taking a backup. I'm sure it has happened, but it's not something that I'd worry about happening under typical circumstances.

There is no zero risk proposition. There are many propositions that are so close to zero risk as to essentially be so. Taking a backup from your computer, that is connected to some sort of surge suppression, on your average day with no electrical storms or work going on in the immediate vicinity is incredibly unlikely to end in disaster. I simply will not worry about that, nor would I do anything to make my clients do so.

Remotely possible, and highly improbable, is not a part of my risk worry factor.

 

[Diggs]

With todays fast internet, and dirt cheap prices of online backup/sync services, if not already existing services like OneDrive with MS accounts, or even DropBox...I just set those to backup the user libraries and BOOM, all done.

Eliminate the human error factor of backups and swapping drives...cuz you know the majority don't do it.

My only real worry about online backups (which I thoroughly recommend) is the mirroring. If a user gets ransomewared on his desktop his connected online backups will get encrypted also. I need to dig deeper but from what I've seen cloud providers are pretty vague on how and what ransomeware protection you get and they vary wildly in the protection they offer.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

My only real worry about online backups (which I thoroughly recommend) is the mirroring. If a user gets ransomewared on his desktop his connected online backups will get encrypted also. I need to dig deeper but from what I've seen cloud providers are pretty vague on how and what ransomeware protection you get and they vary wildly in the protection they offer.

All that I've seen does versionings/revisions/retention. Simply...roll back!
I don't even like DropBox, don't sell it, don't recommend it. But had a lady who owns a store call, she had her back office computer ransomed, I asked if any backups, she said "no". I was just about to walk out, saying "Bummer, well, sorry then, but can't help ya"....noticed she had Dropbox, which is where she keeps ALL her files. I wasn't even familiar with it, but logged into the web admin, noticed a revision feature, rolled things back to a day or two before she got whacked, killed her local folders, resynced, BOOM, all back!

Being familiar with OneDrive and Teams, of course I know those have revisions too....so I'm comfy there.

But good point, with all the cloud providers out there, do your homework on the if choosing lesser known ones and ensure they have that feature.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Serious question, sans any snark: In your entire career, how many instances of this happening have you encountered?

I can immediately think of "once"..hence my "Been there, done that" comment. Power surges can come into a computer via 1x avenue, and spread out and touch everything else connected to that computer. Got a few stories of clients located on some ground prone to lightening strikes. I remember doing a large plant farm (greenhouse) located up high on a hilltop. Also a world famous golf course located on an island...up high on a hill, the island has lots of granite under it...been through 2x major repairs there where lightening hit the building and took out most of their network (server, workstations, etc). Large golf course! Both of those places ended up doing large installs of APC NetProtect setups.

I can think of other times where the USB drive was dead for automated scheduled backups, nobody cracked open the backup software in a long time to check logs, success, failures, etc.

I recall back about 20 years ago, a company that called, I went onsite, they "thought" they were doing backups to burnable CDs regularly. Well, something blew up, they happily handed me a stack of CD that they thought had their important data, I went to check them, browse...and had to deliver the bad news. Whoever setup backups on "burning CDs"...well known for not being reliable...heh....hope they changed careers.

Another external USB drive backup that I now remember, a fresh seafood sales company called us out of the blue, someone thought it would a good idea to blow out the dust bunnies of the drives of their server. Hot swap removable drives. They took all the drives out. Blew the dust out. Put them back, but not in the correct order. Server failed to boot up. They called their prior IT guy, who...(and we know of this guy...doesn't know much, pretty much a craigs list pizza tech), anyways he tried to force a reinitialization and/or rebuild of the RAID..which wiped all the RIS files from the drives. Yeah, they went empty. Their backup wasn't working...server dead in the water. I remember telling her that, and watching her collapse to the floor like a wet rag doll and start crying.

Back when tape drives were popular in servers, many places had the grandfather/father/son tape rotation thing going. And other differential methods. I always hated those, as they relied on all other members of the backup vault being 100% perfect! Or someone forgot to change one of the tapes one of the days. I always, had clients doing full backups each and every day.

In other words, eliminate most of the hardware, and eliminate the human factor, and you've removed the highest percentage of "Things that will fail".

 

[nlinecomputers]

Serious question, sans any snark: In your entire career, how many instances of this happening have you encountered?

I've had zero, and couldn't, even in my wildest dreams, think I'd ever have more than 10. This is one of those things that just happens so seldom that it's not something that is, in my opinion, worth considering. All the more so if you have a residential client who will never consider cloud backup. They need something, and I'd certainly not be concerning them about power surges beyond using a good surge suppressor.

Couple of times a year. Lightning. Don't really see it in my own town but I service as far away as SE New Mexico and they get more rainstorms during the summer monsoon season. And I see it alot on oil rigs as they are natural lightning rods.

 

[Sky-Knight]

And as climate change advances, storm activity intensifies, so even if you're in an area that doesn't see a ton of lightning... you're going to see more.

We're already seeing an increase in incidence rate. But, if you're in a flat area with good grounding, it's not so much of a problem. Here? Well... everyone in this thread has seen a picture of Arizona lightning! Even if you don't know it... you've seen it. People come from all over the world to get pictures of our storms. They are spectacular, and devastating.

I don't consider power conditioning optional, and I'm the guy that runs things on shoe strings.

 

[Bobsie1945]

I use the paid version of Macrium Reflect to create protected images of my system drive (C:\) and main data drive (E:\); each are 2TB drives. I perform a full backup each Sunday and incremental backups for the rest of the week. These image files are stored locally on one of my computer's hard drives. Macrium Reflect also will clone drives and create bootable repair drives. Backup by file is also available. Macrium Reflect is available for both Windows and Mac computers.

I also use a service called Backblaze to backup all my drives offsite (file backup method). Backblaze costs $7.00 a month for unlimited storage (paid annually) but eliminates the need for other external backup drives locally. You can restore any or all of your backups in downloadable zip file(s), a thumb drive or a hard drive (up to 8TB). If you restore via the last two methods, there is an additional cost for the drive but, if you return the drive they send you (after restoring your files), you get your money back. Otherwise, you can keep the drive your restore is on with no refund and you save the cost of shipping it back.

Backblaze has additional (extra cost) options of saving backups for extended periods even if a file is deleted or modified on the local system. B2 Cloud storage of backups is also available for more money but is reasonably priced (a lot lower cost than competing cloud services).

My current 6-drive storage on Backblaze is 7.6 TB and all for just $7 per month ($84 annually). You can backup continuously, once a day or only when you tell it to perform a backup. You can also pause a backup at any time, for any reason, and unpause it when you are ready.

Another good option for local backups is Goodsync, which also can be used for backups to Backblaze's cloud services. It is quite fast whether used locally or for the cloud.

 

[sapphirescales]

Datto for servers which is a local backup plus cloud backups.

Datto is great but the pricing is absolutely ASININE if the client has a large amount of data. Datto makes a Synology NAS seem as cheap as a Walmart flash drive in comparison.

I know my local SMB market is vastly more receptive to the capital investment than they are the constant monthly charge.

Mine is the exact opposite. If I quote them $20/month vs. $1,500 "one time" (of course, that will need to be paid again in a couple of years), they choose $20/month. Then they get tired of paying for it a few years later and decide to go the $1,500 route. Then when the $1,500 machine breaks, they want to go back to $20/month. It's frustrating. I'm sorry but if you want your data backed up you've gotta pay for it. That's just the way it is. No, external hard drives from Costco aren't going to cut it.

 

[Porthos]

Macrium Reflect for Home Use

High performance backups combined with easy to configure backup plans, complete with ransomware protection and email support.

www.macrium.com

 

[SlickMinnow]

For what it's worth, VEEAM has an option to automatically eject a USB drive at the completion of the backup job. Even if the drive stays physically connected, the OS is not aware of it. Of course a reboot or a physical unplug/replug reconnects the drive.

 

[NviGate Systems]

For an average home user, a NAS is going to be a disaster. The security implications as seen recently by the mass WD Erasure of online units is a perfect example.

For many clients, the best I can do is do a backup of the computer as I got it, and if they want regular backups, I can schedule them remotely via TeamViewer and walk them through it and ensure they disconnect the drive. Of course, that's a paid service but if they don't want to think about it but still want the backup that's the next best thing and a nice billable service plus it gives them a chance to let you know if anything else is happening computer wise.

Sadly, most users won't put the effort into saving files. But they will put effort in blaming everyone under the sun about it.

 

[sapphirescales]

For an average home user, a NAS is going to be a disaster. The security implications as seen recently by the mass WD Erasure of online units is a perfect example.

Opening up your NAS to the internet is a really stupid thing to do even if you know what you're doing. I personally use a Synology NAS and I would never turn on remote access. Even though it's not open to the internet I still take all the precautions. I don't use SMB, I use a 100+ character random password +2FA on my two accounts, I've disabled the default admin account entirely, I use a standard user account to run backups, I have Snapshot Replication set up so that if something does get into my NAS I can go back in time and undo whatever was done, etc. By all accounts it should be perfectly safe for me to open up my NAS to the internet, but I just don't want to take the risk. My NAS backs up important stuff like the deed to my house, my tax returns, business information, etc.

There's nothing wrong with using a NAS if you're not opening it up to the internet and you take all necessary security precautions. Most of my clients won't be screwing around with their NAS anyway. After I set it up, they're not going to think about it again until they have a problem. I have several residential clients with Synology NAS boxes I've set up and they know not to mess with them.

 

[Mick]

For a local back-up, I go with FreeFileSync. Can be set to auto-detect a specific external drive/USB etc and run if and when that's plugged in. Does versioning too. Takes a bit of setting up by you (the tech) but once it's in and set, it's rock-solid. Will use (S)FTP if you want to go the cloud option.

 

[HCHTech]

Late to this discussion. For residential customers, I use an external USB drive plus a robocopy script kicked off by a desktop icon. I agree with all the dangers noted about using external drives - that's why I also get them on Backblaze (or at least explain why its necessary, extoll it's virtues, and then let them decide). For desktops, I can set a scheduled task to run the robocopy script. For laptops, of course, they have to be in charge. And yes, often it turns into a frequency of "once every couple of months" -haha. But Backblaze mostly just works. I don't monitor it, but tell them to call me if they ever get the email from them that "we haven't seen you in a while" - I think that's their wording. Then, a quick remote session can usually set it right again. For the external drives, I mount them in a folder, which solves the "drive getting a new letter" problem. I also make sure system restore and file history are on if they have the disk space to spare.

For Businesses, I'll admit I'm a bit all over the map. I'm SMB-only, emphasis on the "S". I like the Synology solution, and have a couple of dozen of those out there. I almost always use their active backup for business app, then set up a nightly HyperBackup job to a Backblaze B2 bucket. Works pretty well, although the cost of the NAS is a hard sell for some. I've got Veeam in a couple of places, Cloudberry in one, and Windows Backup in a handful that just won't spend the money for a better solution. It took a ransomware infection for one recalcitrant business to buy into the Synology solution. Nothing like a good fire to make you go out and buy a fire extinguisher. Oh, and make sure you setup notifications to YOUR email so you can monitor for problems.

 

[britechguy]

Nothing like a good fire to make you go out and buy a fire extinguisher.

And, whether very small business or residential, it very often requires "a good fire."

I can't fix that, either. All I can do is educate about why backups, even for what you may think is "trivial data" is essential, and should be a standard part of computer ownership in 2021, then they make the choice.

As to the blame game that often gets played after the first disaster sans backup, well, let 'em play it. You can lead a horse to water . . .

 

[Philippe]

For residential customers, I use an external USB drive plus a robocopy script kicked off by a desktop icon.

Exactly the same over here

 

[britechguy]

I've used robocopy extensively in the past, but only for user data backups. Does it possess the ability to create a full system image backup?

For myself, I'm far more concerned that clients have a full system image backup than a simple user data backup, though I like them to have both if they will do both. But I can always get user data back from a restored image, but I can't get a fully functioning "ready to rock and roll" system setup precisely as they've always known it unless I have a system image backup. That's what I want most if disaster strikes and, based on experience, so do they.

Not that they're not grateful if they've got all their user data, but they're more grateful if they've got their entire system, which may include multiple users and the data for all of them.