External Hard Drive with Cloud Backup

[OldDutch]

Hello,

I have a friend who recent lost all her photos due to a external hard drive crash. She isn't super tech savvy but knows her way around basic tech things. So I told her about getting an external hard drive that backs up to the cloud.

I have a QNAP NAS, which I backup to the cloud via the NAS OS. I am in IT though so I am able to troubleshoot the odd occasion I have issues. I don't want to go this route as I think a QNAP NAS is too technical for her to configure.

I am looking more for an out of the box external hard drive that has firmware/simple software baked in that will sync the hard drive to the cloud. No need to get into complex setup.

Does anyone have any experience with a solution like this? I would like her to backup once to the external drive and have that hardware auto sync with the cloud so it is simple.

I saw something like this but the online reviews are mixed: http://www.seagate.com/ca/en/product...ersonal-cloud/

Any advice on how to recommend a solution to ensure her photos get a local and cloud backup all in one?

[BlackArcher101]

Seems a bit odd backing up to both an external HD and the cloud.

I just backup to the cloud using CrashPlan. Was very useful a few weeks ago when I lost my main storage drive. Thankfully got all 10+ years of photos back. All automatic and not that expensive.

[OldDutch]

I'll look at CrashPlan, thanks!

I actually backup redundant local and in the Cloud. I have been told that is the most foolproof way to backup. One local and one offsite, in case local HD fails, there is a fire, etc.

Just going offsite is an option but you have to leave your computer on to do the backups. Many people just have laptops these days so they either get annoyed or forget to allow the backup to take place.

So I have a NAS that actually does this at 3AM when I am sleeping, is on all the time, and allows me to close my computer whenever.

Overkill, but knowing my data is auto backed up no matter my laziness has paid for itself LOL.

[BlackArcher101]

Totally forgot about the requirement to leaving your PC on. In that case, the NAS makes sense.

CrashPlan also has a cool feature. For free, someone can install it on their PC and backup their stuff (encrypted) to someone elses computer that has CrashPlan installed. So while I pay for cloud service for my data (600+GB), my dad backs up his data (about 10GB) to my PC. The odds of both of us having a failure at the same time is minimal, so it's a good free solution for people with little data and a friend willing to spare some extra storage (and neither party has to have the pay version for that to work)

Similar to keeping photocopies of important documents at someone elses house in case yours goes up in flames. I think crashplan has a plugin for some NAS models as well.