If you do make use of NAS then it is still advisable to look at backing up the NAS device itself to a provider such as Backblaze B2 or AWS S3 for extra safety (many top NAS manufacturers including QNAP and Synology support doing this).

If you use local backup software that backs up to, for example, a NAS system then you should not have to worry about the safety of your external drive backups should the external drive be removed for long periods of time. Backup Pro 15, Arq 7, Duplicati etc.) then you should have no problems in retaining external drive backups, even if the drive is left unplugged for long periods of time (just make sure the drive is being backed up correctly as discussed).ģ. If you use backup software which supports choosing your own cloud storage (e.g. I have detailed some of these policies a little further down in this article but, generally speaking, some providers are very lenient when it comes to external drives whilst others impose very strict rules (for example, some providers will delete external drive backups if the drive in question is unplugged for more than 30 days).Ģ. If you use a cloud backup provider (a piece of backup software and cloud storage purchased together as a single subscription) then be sure to carefully check the providers policy on backing-up external drives. Once you are happy that you external drive is included in your backup set and is working correctly (hence the test restore) then the next thing to do is check the external hard drive policies of your backup provider, this will, generally speaking, involve one of the following three options:ġ. The easiest way to do this is to recover a small sample of files originating on the external drive from your within backup software and make sure that they recover ok (and crucially can be accessed and are usable).

If you have concerns about whether your external hard drive is being backed-up correctly, one of the first things you should do is open up your current backup software and check that the external drive is selected as a location to be included within the main backup set.Īssuming this does check out ok and the external drive is included in the backup, the next thing to check is that the files on the external drive can be recovered correctly.

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