Storage and backup: three copies, two kinds of device

A copy is not a backup until it is somewhere else

Two drives on the same desk share a power supply, a surge and a room. The arrangement that survives is one working copy, one local copy on a separate device, and one copy that lives somewhere else entirely, whether that is a cloud account or a drive at another address.

Test the restore rather than the backup. An archive nobody has ever opened is a hope, and a scheduled copy that quietly stopped a year ago looks identical to a working one until it is needed.

• Keep the working copy on the machine and copies on separate devices.
• Check periodically that the copy opens and the files inside are complete.
• Replace drives on age rather than waiting for a failure message.

Pick the portable drive for the copy it will hold

A portable SSD is a bare drive on a bridge chip inside a case. The flash inside is quick, but the bridge and the port set the ceiling, so the same drive on an older USB port can be several times slower than on a current one, and a hub shared with a display trims it further.

Flash also holds data best when it is powered now and then. A drive that lives in a drawer for a year is a working copy rather than an archive, so keep a second copy on a second device and check that it opens.

Network gear is part of the same plan

If the second copy lives on a network drive, the router is now in the backup path. A mesh system with wired backhaul keeps that path quick, while a wireless hop between units slows large transfers for everything on the network at the same time.

• Wire the units that carry the traffic if the building allows it.
• Give the desk its own wired port where the router has one.
• Keep the backup device on the same switch as the machine it copies from.