Hi Guys,
I'm new here and am after some backup advice with Server 2012 Essentials :-). I run a small server at home that is primarily used for downloads and to stream media to various clients on my network using Plex. I work in IT but am also a professional photographer in my spare time. Recently I've started to think more seriously about my backup strategy as I want to ensure my clients photos are backed up and safe.
Currently i'm backing up my server nightly to a Zyxel NSA310 NAS device over the network. I'm thinking about changing this to USB though because then I can use the out of the box server backup feature of WS2012E. This seems to work well but i'm only backing up documents and music at the moment.
I have the connector installed on my laptop now so am starting to think about the best strategy for backing up my photos. My main question is - will client computer backups to my server be enough? I was thinking of doing a client computer backup just of my system drive and then doing manual file backups of my RAW photos using Robocopy - or is this just overkill?
My main concern is let's say my laptop hard drive dies and I have to rebuild my PC. Can I re-install windows myself without using the restore functionality of WS2012E and then install the connector and restore the files I need? It's a work machine so has to be joined to my work domain etc so i'd most likely do this at work the come home and restore the files that I need. Is that possible?
Any help is appreciated.
Cheers
Alex