📖 Chapter 05 — Backing Up the Backups
The NAS is one copy. The snapshots are not backups. The chapter that protects the projects from the disasters that no amount of in-NAS protection can handle.
Learning Objectives
- Apply the 3-2-1 backup rule to video projects
- Set up the cold archive (external drive, rotated)
- Configure off-site backup (cloud or offsite drive)
- Test backups regularly to make sure they work
Introduction
The archive is on the NAS. The NAS has RAIDZ2. The NAS has snapshots. The NAS has scrubs and SMART tests and all the protection Volume 1 set up.
And none of it protects against: the house burning down, the NAS being stolen, a ransomware attack that encrypts everything, the power supply failing and corrupting the pool.
For projects that are years of work and irreplaceable, the NAS is one copy. You need at least two more, in different places, on different media.
The 3-2-1 rule
The 3-2-1 backup rule is the industry standard:
- 3 copies of the data (the original + 2 backups)
- 2 different media types (e.g., NAS drives + external USB drive, or NAS drives + cloud)
- 1 off-site (in a different physical location than the original)
For the family NAS: 3 copies means 3 copies. Not "the NAS and a copy of the photos" — the full dataset. The Media/Archive in particular, because that's the irreplaceable stuff.
Copy 1: The NAS (already in place)
Volume 1 set this up: the pool, the datasets, the snapshots. This is your primary copy. It's local, fast, and (if you followed Volume 1) well-protected against drive failures and silent corruption.
It's not protected against: theft, fire, flood, ransomware, the entire machine failing at once.
Copy 2: The cold archive (external drive, rotated)
The conversation's recommended pattern for the second copy: an external USB drive, kept offline (not mounted unless you're actively backing up to it), rotated periodically.
The setup:
- Buy a USB hard drive. For a creator's archive, this should be a desktop drive, not a portable one (larger capacity, more reliable for stationary use). 8-16 TB is a reasonable starting point.
- Plug it into the NAS temporarily. Use ZFS to format it as a single-drive pool (or a ZFS mirror if you buy two for redundancy).
- Configure a scheduled replication task in TrueNAS:
Media/Archiveon the main pool → the external drive, every week. (Or usezfs send | zfs receivevia a script.) - After the replication completes, unmount the external drive.
- Store the drive somewhere: a closet, a drawer, a fireproof safe, a different room from the NAS.
Why "offline" matters: ransomware that hits the NAS can't reach the offline drive. Theft of the NAS doesn't take the offline drive. The drive only connects when you're doing the weekly backup, then disconnects.
The rotation pattern
For extra safety, use two external drives and rotate them:
- Week 1: connect Drive A, replicate, disconnect, store Drive A in a fireproof safe in the basement
- Week 2: connect Drive B, replicate, disconnect, store Drive B in a fireproof safe at a friend's house (or office, or family member's house)
- Week 3: swap. Drive A is now offsite, Drive B is now in the basement
With this pattern, the worst case is: fire takes the house and the basement safe. The offsite drive is safe. The NAS is gone. But the offsite drive has the most recent backup (from 2 weeks ago, when it was last replicated).
This is the "I can rebuild from this" pattern. The cost is two external drives and a weekly swap ritual.
Copy 3: Off-site or cloud
For the third copy, the options are:
Cloud backup
Backblaze B2, Wasabi, AWS S3 Glacier, or a tool that uses them (rclone, Duplicati). For video projects, where the archive can be tens to hundreds of GB, the cost can be significant. As of 2026:
- Backblaze B2: $6/TB/month for storage, plus egress fees for downloads. Good for cold archives.
- Wasabi: $7/TB/month, no egress fees. Better for archives you might need to restore quickly.
- AWS S3 Glacier: very cheap for cold storage ($1/TB/month) but slow to restore (hours). Best for "if the house burned down and I need it someday" archives.
For TK's conversation: cloud backup was acknowledged as the "easy button" but the user decided the local cold-archive rotation was sufficient. The reason: cost (uploading and storing 4-10 TB of video is not free) and bandwidth (uploading 500 GB takes days on a typical home connection).
Off-site drive at a friend or family member's house
The rotation pattern above, with one drive always at someone else's house. Free (or close to it), fast (you drive the drive there, you don't upload it), and works even if your house burns down.
The downside: you have to remember to swap the drives on schedule. For most people, this is the right balance of safety and effort.
What to back up
Not everything needs 3-2-1. The protection levels:
| Data | Copies | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Media/Archive (finished projects) | 3 | Irreplaceable, years of work, can't be recreated |
| Media/Active (in-progress projects) | 2 | Important but recreatable from source |
| Family photos / videos | 3 | Irreplaceable. The whole point of the NAS. |
| Documents (scanned) | 3 | Originals may exist in paper form, but the digital version is now primary |
| Immich data | 3 | Same as family photos |
| Passwords (Vaultwarden) | 3 | Critical; backup is part of recovery |
| Nextcloud files | 2-3 | Same as Documents |
| TrueNAS config | 3 | Small, easy to back up, makes recovery fast |
| App data (general) | 2 | Most can be reinstalled, but data within them shouldn't be lost |
For TK's build: Media/Archive and the family photo library are the irreplaceable ones. Spend the most effort on backing those up. The app data is less critical because most apps can be reinstalled and re-imported.
Testing backups
The single most common backup failure: the backup is set up, the backup is running, but the backup doesn't actually contain the data you think it does. A scheduled task that errors out silently. A replication that breaks. A drive that disconnects mid-backup.
The fix: test the backup by restoring from it.
- Quarterly, pick one project from the Media/Archive.
- Restore it from the backup (the external drive, the cloud, whatever).
- Verify the files match the originals (compare checksums if you want to be rigorous).
- Verify the project can be opened in the NLE from the restored copy.
This is the only way to know the backup actually works. "Set and forget" is a recipe for discovering the backup is broken at the moment you need it.
The TrueNAS replication task
TrueNAS has built-in replication. The setup:
- Connect the external drive. The drive should have a ZFS pool on it (formatted by TrueNAS during the "Import Disk" flow).
- Data Protection → Replication Tasks → Add.
- Source:
tank/Media/Archive. - Destination: the external drive's pool.
- Schedule: weekly.
- Mode: incremental (only send the changes since the last replication).
The first replication takes hours (copies everything). Subsequent replications are quick (only the changes). After the replication completes, run the "unmount" command on the drive.
The "what if the project is in progress and the laptop dies" case
The Media/Active is replicated to the backup. But what about the in-progress work that's only on the laptop? That's where Syncthing (Chapter 03) comes in. The Syncthing sync to Media/Active IS the laptop's backup, in a sense. If the laptop dies, the most recent Syncthing state is on the NAS.
For belt-and-suspenders, you can also:
- Use the NLE's built-in auto-save (every 1-5 minutes)
- Use macOS Time Machine or Windows File History for the laptop's internal SSD
- Periodically rsync the active project to the NAS as a separate backup
None of these replace the 3-2-1 for the archive. They're for the laptop's failure mode, not the project's failure mode.
The 10-year cost of cold archive
For a creator with 5 TB of archive, growing at 1 TB per year:
- External drive 1: $200 (one-time, lasts ~5 years)
- External drive 2: $200 (one-time, lasts ~5 years, offsite)
- Cloud backup: $5-30/month depending on provider and amount
Over 10 years: $400-500 in drives, $600-3600 in cloud. For 5-15 TB of irreplaceable data, this is reasonable insurance.
Engineering Note
The point of a backup is the moment you need it. Most people have backups they've never tested. The first time they actually need to restore from a backup — after a house fire, after a ransomware attack, after a failed drive that took the array with it — they discover the backup is broken, incomplete, or missing the most important files.
Test quarterly. Pick a project, restore it, verify it works. That 30 minutes every 3 months is the price of the backup actually being a backup when you need it.
Summary
3-2-1 for video: three copies, two media types, one off-site. The NAS is the first copy. The external drive, kept offline, is the second. The off-site drive (rotated with a friend or family) or the cloud backup is the third. Test by restoring quarterly. The cost is small; the protection is what you actually have, not what you think you have.
Checklist
- ⬜ Buy two external drives for the rotation (8-16 TB each, NAS-rated if possible)
- ⬜ Format them as ZFS pools and configure TrueNAS replication tasks for
Media/Archive - ⬜ Arrange an off-site location for one of the drives (friend, family, office)
- ⬜ Set a weekly calendar reminder to swap and replicate the drives
- ⬜ Quarterly: pick a project, restore it from the backup, verify the files are intact
- ⬜ Configure TrueNAS config backup (small file, easy to back up, makes recovery fast)
Looking Ahead
Chapter 06 is sharing with collaborators: editors, colorists, sound engineers, anyone who needs access to project files. How to share the right amount of access for the right amount of time without compromising the rest of the system.