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Advice On Backup Regime Changes
I have a 24x7x365 "Home Server" system which acts as a file server and Plex media server. I am using 6 x 2Tb Hdds and DriveBender as a storage aggregator to give a single 8Tb storage pool. DriveBender is a cross between software raid and Windows native Storage Spaces.
Long story short due to an email change I missed the alerts of a failing hard drive until it was too late and the drive died before it could be safely replaced. However all data such as Documents, Photos, Videos etc are backed up to Onedrive. (M Plex library movies, TV Shows, Music etc is backed up to another Plex Server). However on attempting to restore my missing data (which was only partial as the data is spread across all internal disks) I have seen a flaw in my backup strategy.
Currently I am using SyncToy to back-up nightly any new or changed files to a directory on separate 2 Tb Hard drive. This directory is the OneDrive root folder so the contents are backed up up to OneDrive.
Previously this appeared to work well and I am using the Echo option i.e
- New and updated (renamed and deleted) files are copied LEFT to RIGHT only
- Use this option if you want to backup data files one-way, from your computer to an external drive.
This means that any old files I no longer need and delete are deleted from the backup which prevents the backup from steadily growing with old unwanted files. However failure of the hard drive is equivalent of a deletion as far as Synctoy is concerned so it has deleted the lost files from the backup!
My best option is to change from Echo to Contribute i.e
- New and updated (renamed) files are copied LEFT to RIGHT only. Deleted files are not mirrored.
- Use this option if you want to backup data files one-way, with the exception of deleted files. as this would avoid the possibility of accidental deletion also deleting from the backup. The downside is that the space taken by the backup will continue to grow. I am nearly up to 940Gb of my 1Tb Onedrive allocation due to the number of home videos and family photos we have.
I have considered using another sync session that runs say once every month or even three months using Echo which would detect any "deliberate" deletions of files and remove these from the backup drive. I don't think this will be easy with Synctoy as all folder pairs are run at the same time so may have to switch to another option like FreeFileSync where you can use batch scripts to run different backups at different times. I have used Robocopy before but not very fluent in scripting different backup types and would prefer a GUI interface.
Any suggestions on a Backup Regime change to fulfil what I am trying to achieve would be appreciated including other software or ways of doing it. As an aside I also Macrium Reflect Free Edition installed for OS restore.