How do I back up my MacBook Pro and Synology NAS?

How do I back up my MacBook Pro and Synology NAS?

Now you almost certainly will encounter many blog posts about the importance of backup so I will assume that you are familiar with the 3-2-1 backup strategy. This means that you should have at least three of your data. Locally, your primary computer has your raw data and copies on other devices, such as an external hard disk. In addition, you will keep another copy in the cloud. Keep in mind that external hard drives do not need to be connected to your computer to prevent lightning strikes on your house when you do not lose both copies at the same time, you may experience power spikes or be affected by Ransomware. In this article, I will introduce how to back up my computer (a MacBook Pro) and Synology NAS that contains Terrabytes irreplaceable data. To prevent data loss due to power outages or power spikes, I recommend using an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) like this.

Online Backup

A few years ago, I used Back blaze for online backup. They make the backup computer very simple. However, since their encryption is invalid, I do not recommend them.

In addition, they do not allow you to back up network shares, such as NAS. I also want to back up my NAS because it is where all my photos are (not the SSD on my MacBook).

Now I back up my MacBook Pro and my NAS to Amazon Drive (formerly Amazon Cloud Drive). To do this, I used Arq to back up my MacBook Pro and Synology's Hyper Backup to back up my NAS. Arq creates a backup of the hard drive, encrypts it locally, encrypts my data before it enters the cloud, and uploads it to your chosen cloud account.

I chose Amazon Drive because Amazon Drive is the only Drive provider that offers unlimited storage at consumer-friendly prices. All competitors including Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive offer up to 1TB of storage, or if you need more, the price is unreasonable. Unlimited storage allows me to back up my entire NAS to the cloud, not just my MacBook. My NAS currently consists of three 3 TB hard drives configured as SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID). So my NAS can hold 6TB of data. Although I have not filled in the 6TB of data yet, I like Amazon and will not restrict me because of my data growth.

(Bootable) Offline Backup

Because the internet is relatively slow and you are not always connected to the internet, of course, you also need offline backup. Apple's macOS has built-in TimeMachine. Although TimeMachine is definitely better than no use and it is very easy to use for non-technical users, it is still very bad. In more cases, the backup will be damaged. Especially if you shut down your MacBook or back up to a network device other than the Apple Time Capsule (such as a Synology NAS) during the backup process. You will only notice that after your data is lost, your backup will not be able to recover the lost files. This is why I don't use TimeMachine at all.

So what should I use? There are two options: Super Duper and Carbon Copy Cloner. I use Carbon Copy Clones. They are all identical, there are small differences. Therefore, each one considers the same as the one and which is not important. However, in my opinion, this is a difference. Carbon Copy Cloner duplicates Mac's Recovery HD partition, Super Duper does not.

I hope this is useful to you, and I have explained everything very clearly. If so, please feel free to share or link to this page.

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