I would take it straight to a computer doctor. When my old PC died they managed to recover the vast majority of the files. Just don't try doing anything to the drive yourself.
I use NASs for both back up and to act as media servers. Going from what Obelixx said, she could rip all her old stuff and digitise it and then use simple DLNA (Smart TVs?) players to access it. The only snag with NASs is that they're still local, so don't give you offsite security. I had hoped my dear dafter would get a NAS and we could then cross backup remotely across the net.
I personally use Netgear NASs and my old NAS developed a fault in one of the drives, but as the drives are Raid'd (the drives, min 2, effectively carry copies of each other), a new drive was slotted in, and the NAS (well, Raid really)recovered the data.
The PC doc should also be able to advise on new storage, and might also be able to source it for you and help to get it set up, if that's what you want. OH does that sort of thing voluntarily for most of our friends and family but you're just a bit too far away, or I'd send him round
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
The number of times I had staff coming to me with years of their work on 1Tb USB drives hoping that I would be able to recover it is just too long to count. Many were recoverable, just as many were not.
No matter what device you use to store data its not a backup unless you have two copies one each on a separate device or location.
Personally I use a simple external hard drive solution to backup my data to. This is a backup of data (copy) of my main drive data on my computer .The very important stuff to me I also have copies of on my Microsoft One Drive account .
These two simple steps will ensure in the unlikely event of a fire in your home or a failure of your main data drive you always have copies of your treasured data somewhere you can recover.
Unless you have terabytes of data to backup a NAS to the average user is unnecessary.
I used to image my hard drive daily when I was still working as I used to have a lot of my work data on my work provided desktop that I used at home before the migration to Office 365 (Cloud Based). There are a number of programs out there to do this, but the average home user probably wont bother, but its a brilliant way to store images of all your data and restore your computer quickly should your main computer hard drive fail.
All I would say, and did do to dozens of staff over the years is: Don't use your backup drive as a storage drive. Its your backup for a reason.
'The power of accurate observation .... is commonly called cynicism by those that have not got it.
I think with the amounts of data we all create...just think of all the photos we all take, I think a NAS is the only way to get on top of the issue of archiving. But agree that people have to be more savvy about their digital assets and assume that any single copy of a file may be unavailable eventually.
Also it's great to have a media server with all the TV, films and music you want to play on any device. Takes a while to digitise from physical formats but worth the effort for ease of use and frankly no need to pay anyone to access it.
My thinking is probably very passé to the average twenty year old who is happy to stream...until one day in the future the rights get pulled 🤣
I don't have a huge amount of data to back up, but I have two external drives. I back up my Mac monthly and alternate which drive I back up to. So if one external drive corrupts I have most stuff on the other.
Don't do what a friend of mine did. They created a drive and used that to backup the content of the C: drive. The only problem was that they created the drive on the same physical disk as the C:. It was only when that physical drive failed they discovered the shortcomings of that system.
I think with the amounts of data we all create...just think of all the photos we all take, I think a NAS is the only way to get on top of the issue of archiving. But agree that people have to be more savvy about their digital assets and assume that any single copy of a file may be unavailable eventually.
Also it's great to have a media server with all the TV, films and music you want to play on any device. Takes a while to digitise from physical formats but worth the effort for ease of use and frankly no need to pay anyone to access it.
My thinking is probably very passé to the average twenty year old who is happy to stream...until one day in the future the rights get pulled 🤣
If you haven't already done so and it sounds like you store a lot of data and if your NAS supports it look into setting it up with a RAID 5 array to give you redundancy should a drive fail.
'The power of accurate observation .... is commonly called cynicism by those that have not got it.
Posts
No matter what device you use to store data its not a backup unless you have two copies one each on a separate device or location.
Personally I use a simple external hard drive solution to backup my data to. This is a backup of data (copy) of my main drive data on my computer .The very important stuff to me I also have copies of on my Microsoft One Drive account .
These two simple steps will ensure in the unlikely event of a fire in your home or a failure of your main data drive you always have copies of your treasured data somewhere you can recover.
Unless you have terabytes of data to backup a NAS to the average user is unnecessary.
I used to image my hard drive daily when I was still working as I used to have a lot of my work data on my work provided desktop that I used at home before the migration to Office 365 (Cloud Based). There are a number of programs out there to do this, but the average home user probably wont bother, but its a brilliant way to store images of all your data and restore your computer quickly should your main computer hard drive fail.
All I would say, and did do to dozens of staff over the years is:
Don't use your backup drive as a storage drive. Its your backup for a reason.
'The power of accurate observation .... is commonly called cynicism by those that have not got it.
George Bernard Shaw'
Also it's great to have a media server with all the TV, films and music you want to play on any device. Takes a while to digitise from physical formats but worth the effort for ease of use and frankly no need to pay anyone to access it.
My thinking is probably very passé to the average twenty year old who is happy to stream...until one day in the future the rights get pulled 🤣
@amancalledgeorge
Unless your NAS is setup as a minimum with a Raid 5 array (RAID 10 is better) and hot swap spare its not going to be much use as a backup device when a drive fails.
If you haven't already done so and it sounds like you store a lot of data and if your NAS supports it look into setting it up with a RAID 5 array to give you redundancy should a drive fail.
'The power of accurate observation .... is commonly called cynicism by those that have not got it.
George Bernard Shaw'