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 get locked. Offsite backups that all live in the same provider fail together. The second "2" saves you when (not if) one provider has an outage or worse.
My current stack
Copy 1 — Primary NAS (Synology DS220+)
- RAID 1 (mirror) so a single disk death doesn't matter
- 8TB total, ~5TB used
- Runs daily backup from all household PCs/Macs via Synology Active Backup
Copy 2 — Local external HDD (rotation)
- 2 external drives I rotate weekly between offsite storage and home
- Stored in a fire-resistant pouch at a family member's house
- Bare-metal weekly backup using Veeam ZIP files
Copy 3 — Backblaze B2 (cold storage)
- ~$5/TB/month for infrequent-access storage
- Encrypted with restic before upload (Backblaze never sees plaintext)
- Daily incremental, weekly full prune
Copy 4 — Wasabi (hot offsite mirror)
- ~$7/TB/month, no egress fees
- Same restic repo pushed here too
- Faster restore than Backblaze if Backblaze is slow
The cost is about $11/TB/month total. For my ~5TB that's $55/month. Higher than CrashPlan, but I own the chain end-to-end.
The Windows + NAS problem I kept hitting
Here's the trick that took me 18 months to figure out: on Windows, native network shares (SMB mounts) don't show up consistently in backup software.
Specifically:
- Macrium Reflect sometimes couldn't see my NAS share
- Veeam ZIP backups would silently skip files on SMB mounts
- Even Windows' built-in File History would error out randomly
The fix for me: mount the NAS as a real drive letter via WebDAV using ScsDriver ($5.50 lifetime). Now my backup software sees "D:" just like a local disk and works perfectly. Drag-and-drop in Explorer works too.
For Mac/Linux users this is a non-issue (native WebDAV, NFS, or SMB just works). This is purely a Windows pain point.
Why I'm not on CrashPlan or Backblaze Personal
I've used both. The dealbreakers for me:
- Restore speed: When I lost a disk in 2024 and needed 2TB back, CrashPlan's "we'll mail you a drive" took 5 days. By then I'd already restored from my local copies. The cloud backup is insurance, not the primary restore path.
- Vendor lock-in: When Backblaze raised prices 2 years in a row I wanted to leave, but my 6TB initial upload was a hostage. With restic + my own B2/Wasabi repos I can move providers in an afternoon.
- Privacy: I encrypt before upload. Even if the cloud provider gets breached, my photos and tax docs are unreadable.
The trade-off: I spend about 30 minutes each to maintain (check that backups actually ran, prune old snapshots, rotate the external drive). CrashPlan costs 0 effort but more money and less control.
Software I run
- restic: my backup engine. Deduplicates, encrypts, supports any S3-compatible backend.
- Veeam Agent Free: for Windows bare-metal backups (system image + files)
- Synology Active Backup: for the NAS itself + any DSM apps
- ScsDriver: $5.50 lifetime Windows client to mount WebDAV as a real drive letter
Total software cost: under $20 for the Windows side (one Veeam free + ScsDriver license).
The rotation drill
Every Sunday:
- Pull current external HDD from offsite
- Plug in, run full backup (~4 hours overnight)
- Pull previous external HDD, take to offsite
- Verify both Backblaze and Wasabi got their daily incrementals
Every quarter:
- Test restore (pick 5 random files, restore to a temp folder, verify)
- Update the encryption keys (and store the new key in 2 places)
- Check drive health with CrystalDiskInfo
This sounds like a lot. In practice it takes 30 minutes on Sunday and 2 hours quarterly. I do it while watching TV.
What's not backed up
- Browser bookmarks (use a password manager like Bitwarden, which IS backed up)
- Email (Gmail is already in the cloud, redundant)
- Photos on phones (auto-upload to a separate Immich instance, then backed up via restic)
What I'd tell someone starting out
If you're not currently backing up at all, the fastest path:
- Buy 1 external HDD ($70 for 4TB)
- Install Veeam Agent Free on your main PC
- Schedule a weekly backup
- Done
If you have 4TB+ or already do cloud backup, the next step is restic + Backblaze B2 (~$5/TB/month).
When you hit outto 10TB+ or have multiple sites, add the second cloud provider + rotation drill.
Don't over-engineer this at the start. The best backup system is the one you actually run. The worst is the one you set up perfectly and never touch.
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