Would love to live next to this guy. Not.

Easy to say "yeah go ahead and do it" when you're not the one within scratching distance of an angry bear.

I didn't know they made women that big OR guys dumb enough to try to lift a woman that big.

I had WD Golds running for over 11 years at 12 hours per day and some that were 7 years old running 24/7 - just retired the server. They outlasted the server's useful life.

You are right about the GOAL of getting drives from different production runs. I remember there was an HP or IBM (can't remember) service bulletin that said that certain run of server drives had internal contamination that would definitely shorten their life span and they were warrantying them. Frightening stuff to a system admin.

So, you're going to have newer files on the small drives and want them to end up on the big drive as the MASTER storage - right? I don't know about automated - meaning that when you plug the small drive in, it's going to sync to the big drive without you doing anything. But something that you can start manually and it will then automatically copy newer files to the big drive - that is possible.

Robocopy Where J: is one of your small drives and X: is your big drive. It will copy newer or changed files from the source to the destination and remove files from the destination that are no longer on the source. Remove /MIR if you don't want that feature.

robocopy.exe J:\data X:\drive1 /MIR /FFT /TEE /ZB /R:1 /W:1 /XA:SH /XJ /xJD /XJF /LOG:"C:\datacopynas.log"

Have a batch file for each small drive and change J: to K: and drive1 to drive2 etc. to keep the small drives in separate folders on the big drive. Very important or else chaos.

Then just find a big online bucket to dump your external drive to for online backup. You have to look at price.

You should think about simplifying your setup though. Too many drives unless it has to be that way for some reason. It will increase the likelihood of failure or confusion/mistake on your part.

I swear by idrive for myself and my customers. Customer since 2015. I wouldn't pay attention to that.

Why post in QNAP sub?

All the drives will work just fine. The SMR will have the slowdown issue, but maybe you can live with it for overnight backup. I personally don't want any of them. The Blues are really for PCs, very basic.

The problem with buying drives at two different times does NOT guarantee you're getting another batch of drives necessarily. Even two different stores may sell the same batch a couple of months apart due to different sell rates. So, it's hard to guarantee you get a different batch unless you did something like buy one Red and one Blue then wait 9 months and buy another Red.

I personally always use the Gold drives. They have fantastic longevity. But I know price and size + price vs. size are factors. My customers and I have relative small amounts of data.

QnapDaniel to the rescue????

Right - I love how people say to use those other services when it's a home user that has never even set up any backup before. It's like jumping off the deep end.

This is true and you only know if a drive works when you have purchased them and plugged them in. If they don't work, can you send them back? It gets messy.

I understand about the RAID with SSD thing, but I would still do it. The chance that both drives will die at the same time is small. If you have only one drive, then boom - failure. Otherwise you're stuck with spinners. You make the choice.

Do you work for PCloud? I had never heard of it before until you.

If you're talking a USB stick, then I would be worried. They are not as reliable as you would like to think. They are generally made with the poor quality memory. If it's a USB drive with an SSD or spinning drive inside, that would be much more reliable. But I wouldn't want my only copy of data on any one device. Lookup at the Backup Wiki and/or google 3-2-1.

In my two times dealing with QNAP support (five years ago, for reference), they were quite slow to get the ball rolling. So no surprise to me, your experience.

With these devices, you just have to hope that they run a long time without issues. Dell Business Support it ain't. Your mileage may vary.

Well, in general, I would have no fear in using Samsung SSDs, especially the Pro version. I always use Samsung SSDs. The PROS are better but I use the EVOs and they have been 100% reliable for me and all my customers. I have not had a single failure. Of course, those are boot drives for Windows, but they are many years old.

The compatibility for that device only lists the 980 Pro, so I don't know if you should roll the dice. I can't imagine the 990 Pro not working, but......................................

Compatibility

The double-conversion on-line UPS units are nice because they are always providing clean power to your devices instead of running on AC and then kicking in only when there is a problem. They are quite a bit more expensive and not necessary unless you have terribly dirty power or you're running a mission critical stuff.

You could certainly go with that unit as long as you put a card into the slot and shut down multiple devices - PC and NAS. That's the downside of a single cheaper NAS - only one device gets the message to shut down via USB if the power goes out and stays out.

Reason for posting this???? Are you bragging? Are you trying to sell the NAS? Not allowed

I only reboot for firmware updates unless something crazy is going on that I can't understand, but that is extremely rare.

I think the "running a long time" message is just a way for QNAP to get people to reboot before the firmware update, thus increasing the likelihood of a successful update. In other words, while it shouldn't be necessary to do that, many people have their systems maxed out and a reboot may free up some memory and reduce some zombie processes.

I wonder if any QNAP employee knows how many days triggers the "running long time" message before a firmware update. My guess is that it's very low and just CYA.

Don't worry. Soon there will be transponders on your car measuring how many miles you drive so that you can pay road tax quarterly. Lots of money in the coffers. And they won't keep the location data - I'm sure of that. Have no fear.

TS-253D upgraded successfully. I'll report back if it causes issues later.

Too many people just like this. A sense of entitlement and/or refusing to follow rules of society. 30 days on the prison farm.

I think you have a bigger problem than backup, in a sense. There is no logic to files just disappearing. I would be worried your computer is compromised. But YES - reliable backup, whatever type it is!!!!

And you point out the number one reason why I don't like connecting USB memory sticks or external hard drives to do backups. People are lazy and/or forget!!

Too bad you didn't read my comment first. You hit all my points - for a second time.

Yes, I wouldn't screw around with trying to re-integrate it into the NAS. Since (I believe this is the scenario) you said the NAS is telling you the drive needs to be formatted when you put the drive into the NAS. Do NOT proceed.

If you can't read the data and it is super important, there is always data recovery.

But then I have to ask you about your backup. Did you NOT have a backup? If not, please fix this. You are slitting your own throat without a good, tested backup.