Solved Given these resources, what would your backup strategy be?

With what VERY little I know about NAS, from a home user perspective, I can not see how any benefit one would get from using a NAS for backups could possibly outweigh the cost unless money was no object.(I'm poor. Every dollar counts) To my way of thinking a NAS is overkill for that purpose.
In the same vein, depending on what a computer is used for and the importance of the data stored on it, I'm also a believer one can go overkill on the backup plan one chooses for any given computer(s). What might be the best backup choice for one system would not always the best choice for another. But that's just me and mine. I know that others feel differently. One has to do what he is comfortable with.

hdmi said:

Well if you look at current prices on amazon you'll sound find that newegg is charging you $421 extra for just 4GB more DDR4 RAM +assembly +testing. If that ain't overpicing, I haven't a clue what could be.

Amazon.com

Amazon.com: Synology HAT3310 12TB Plus Series SATA HDD 3.5" (HAT3310-12T) : Electronics

Amazon.com: Synology HAT3310 12TB Plus Series SATA HDD 3.5" (HAT3310-12T) : Electronics

www.amazon.com

In addition, buying the HDDs themselves from Synology is fairly stupid IMO. There are more affordable alternatives to be found, e.g. these.
Finally, who on earth chooses RAID 0 for storing backups.

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Spirit, ye must be the Ghost of Christmas Past.

DennisG said:

Thankyou. I keep my important personal files in a Veracrypt container which I am currently uploading to the Cloud - just in case !
Update: It is taking forever !

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I use a split backup strategy: image full & incremental for OS with MacriumReflect, and file full & incremental for data with PerfectBackup. All are scheduled jobs that perform encryption so I am not concerned about data on the cloud. The incremental backups result in smaller file sizes. With automatic copying to the OneDrive, usually overnight, there is no concern about the time taken.

TonyCzar said:

IMHO, slow transfer is the worst aspect of cloud storage. I wouldn't even consider sending full backups for six computers to cloud storage every night, but it works great on my NAS.

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Separate drives for OS and data allow different backup strategies. It may be practical to do full image backup of the OS once per month with weekly incrementals. For data this might be weekly full backups and daily incrementals. To spread transfer to cloud a staggered schedule could be used so that a full data backup is done on a different day for each PC.

Quandary said:

I use a split backup strategy: image full & incremental for OS with MacriumReflect, and file full & incremental for data with PerfectBackup. All are scheduled jobs that perform encryption so I am not concerned about data on the cloud. The incremental backups result in smaller file sizes. With automatic copying to the OneDrive, usually overnight, there is no concern about the time taken.

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Yes, using a tiered approach (to split the strategy up into multiple tiers) with different values assigned to each tier can very often help to better understand and control the cost versus value proposition for backup and recovery options. Top 5 backup and recovery challenges and their remedies | TechTarget

Quandary said:

Separate drives for OS and data allow different backup strategies.

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I use separate partitions for OS and data, yet, for various practical reasons, I still keep some of my data on the OS partition, where feasible. Whenever I decide to make another image of the OS partition, I can easily conveniently specify file/folder exclusions (with wildcards) in the GUI of the bootable ISO of Acronis True Image 2021, which is what I use on a Ventoy-formatted USB flash drive for making these images. I shudder the thought of having to always force myself to keep all my data (or almost) on the separate partition so meticulously. In a lot of cases IMO, that would be more akin to typical OCD, or spending extra effort for no good reason.

Quandary said:

It may be practical to do full image backup of the OS once per month with weekly incrementals.

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It may be, but I don't make a full image backup of the OS once per month, and, I certainly don't do this on a fixed schedule. On average, I tend to make a full image backup of the OS only every couple of years with only two or three, maybe four incrementals per year. I simply keep track of how much effort and time would be lost if my Windows partition were to go up in smoke, as doing this is what enables me to choose the moment in time of when to make another image of the OS. As far as the OS is concerned, for most home users, I believe that this should be already more than enough. A clear exception would be if you love to tinker with the OS in such a particular way that your risk killing it several times a week. I tinker with it, a whole lot actually. But I don't torture it to death. I don't need to torture it to death. Microsoft already does a good job killing Windows by constantly treating the user as their adversary so, no need to making it worse.

Quandary said:

For data this might be weekly full backups and daily incrementals. To spread transfer to cloud a staggered schedule could be used so that a full data backup is done on a different day for each PC.

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For data I don't do scheduled backups either. Instead, I manually start the FastCopy job as soon as I am ready. Only a very small portion of my data is so critically important to me that I need it to be backed up near-instantly. For that, I made my own backup tier that is some ways similar to the CDP (Continuous Data Protection) concept, but different.