If you are using your WHS as a backup and share of all your files then you MUST backup your WHS, don’t put your trust on the Hard drive that is in your WHS or any of your computers (Windows/Mac/Linux) or even a Network Attached Storage.
There is a saying you have not backed up a file unless there is three (or more) copies of it.
It is easy to backup your WHS, for this example I will be just be
making one backup copy.
You can either use an Internal or an External hard drive for the backup. And if you want to go overboard with keeping your data safe, you can get a ioSafe hard drive either internal or external (USB). And add it to the storage pool.
The ioSafe products are internal and external hard drives that are disaster proof, from fire and floods, plus if the hard drive does not work within the disaster recovery service warranty ioSafe will pay up to $1000 (US). At this time the price of the ioSafe Solo (External Drive) is $299.98 for 1.5TB and with 5 years warranty and $1000 disaster recovery service.
This being said some people will think, that the ioSafe products are hard drives in fire safes, yes that is true but they created the firesafes so that the hard drives will still be there after the fire has gone out, and the fact that the foam in the product is made of water it cools down around the hard drive.
Donavon West over at HomeServerHacks has wrote a post of how to do this, as I have not got the ioSafe and it would be confusing to some using different images of another product.
He has said that you have two options open to you using the ioSafe. Plan A you add the ioSafe to the Storage Pool and have data duplication on. Plan B is that you add the ioSafe to the Storage Pool but you have it as Backup of the files on the WHS. I would add one more plan, Plan C would be you add it to your WHS and not add it to the Storage Pool. And then you have two options open to you now. Option 1, you can setup a Folder sync using Microsoft’s SyncToy and just sync the shares, this can be done if either you have the clients backup on the cloud or don’t have any. Option 2, you have a backup to hard drive program running and you backup all of your WHS, this is for people that have spend hours modified their server to do what they want it, for example PHP, Apache, etc.
You can if you want still use online backup via a number of companies, just for that extra peace of mind. Yes online backup is slow and pricey, however those once in a lifetime photos, videos or your family and friends are priceless.
You can have a standard USB or eSATA hard drive(s) and give it to a family member who lives in another town, or you can put the standard hard drives in a waterproof and fireproof safe and put it in your garden shed. But this means that you have to do the backup and send the hard drive out and then bring it back to backup up-to-date data.