My 3-2-2 self-hosted backup strategy (with the WebDAV mount trick)
I've been refining my home backup setup for about 3 years. After one false-start year where I overcomplicated everything, this is the strategy that actually stuck. The rule: 3-2-2, not 3-2-1 The classic 3-2-1 means: 3 copies of your data, on 2 different media types, 1 offsite. For home users I add a second 2: 2 copies offsite, in 2 different clouds. The reason: hard drives fail. Cloud accounts…
For the past three years, the author has fine-tuned a home backup setup that follows the 3-2-2 strategy. Unlike the traditional 3-2-1 approach, which involves three copies of data on two different media types, with one copy offsite, the author adds a second 2 for redundancy: two copies offsite in different cloud storage services. This redundancy is crucial, as hard drives can fail, cloud accounts can be locked, and offsite backups can be lost if a single provider experiences an outage.
The author's current backup stack consists of four components: the primary NAS (Synology DS220+) with RAID 1 for added protection, a weekly rotation of two external HDDs stored at a family member's house, Backblaze B2 for cold storage at a low cost, and Wasabi for hot offsite mirroring. The author encrypts the data using restic before uploading it to the cloud, ensuring privacy even in the event of a cloud provider breach.
The author faced challenges with backup software not recognizing the primary NAS share on Windows machines. To resolve this, they mounted the NAS as a real drive letter using ScsDriver, a simple and affordable solution. This allowed backup software to access the NAS without issue, and drag-and-drop functionality worked seamlessly as well.
The author chose not to use services like CrashPlan or Backblaze Personal due to concerns about restore speed, vendor lock-in, and privacy. Instead, they rely on restic for backup and encryption, as well as Veeam Agent Free for Windows bare-metal backups and Synology Active Backup for the NAS. The total software cost for the Windows side is under $20, with minimal maintenance required.
The rotation process involves pulling the current external HDD from offsite, plugging it in, and running a full backup overnight. The previous external HDD is then transported to the offsite location for verification. This process takes about 30 minutes on Sundays and 2 hours quarterly, with quarterly testing of restores to ensure data integrity.
The author's backup strategy is tailored to their specific needs and can be adapted for those just starting out, such as purchasing a single external HDD and scheduling a weekly backup with Veeam Agent Free.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
