RECOVERY PLANNING

A practical backup strategy for a home server

A useful backup strategy is about surviving different failure types. Keeping several copies, avoiding a single point of failure and having at least one off-site copy remains a sensible baseline.

The familiar 3-2-1 pattern

A common starting point is three copies of important data, stored across two different storage types or locations, with one copy off-site. The value is not the numbers themselves; it is the separation between failures.

Local backup gives fast recovery

A USB drive, second NAS or another local target can make large restores quick. But a local copy in the same room may be lost to theft, fire or electrical damage at the same time as the live server.

Off-site protects against site-level loss

An encrypted cloud backup, a second device in another location or removable media stored elsewhere protects against events that affect the whole home. Synology's current guidance still emphasises the off-site copy for exactly this reason. See Synology's current backup guidance.

Version history protects against mistakes

Backups that retain previous versions can help when corruption or unwanted changes are discovered later. A mirror that immediately reproduces every deletion does not provide the same recovery window.

Test restores

Restore a few files regularly and practise rebuilding important services. A green “backup completed” message does not prove that the data is recoverable.

Use the backup storage planner to estimate capacity.