Work Hard, Travel Harder

Throughout the years Angel has borne witness to not only one, but two close friends, who have had to face the consequences of a corrupted drive. Despite every attempt to recover their data, they ended up with the loss of thousands of photos, work documents and important files.

Seeing years of their virtual footprint disappear in a blink of an eye, Angel has always taken extra precautions to ensure that he wouldn’t find himself in the same situation. He has made a conscious effort to ensure that his backups are as foolproof and regular as possible, knowing that prevention is certainly a better option than recovery.

For over 15 years, Angel’s lifestyle has been a synergy of technology; exploring the outdoors while also roaming social media. Angel spends his weekdays working as a full-time software engineer. Despite this, he manages to juggle various hobbies and side jobs, including scuba diving, mountain biking, surfing, mountaineering, backpacking, blogging and snapping away as an amateur photographer. Using the outdoors as his respite, his interaction with nature has become a way of combating years of exhaustion, boredom, and daily routine. It has also become a way for him to further explore his interests in photography and blogging.

His adventures have lead him to see wonderful parts of the world, creating memories that he shares with others. His passion for these experiences has translated through his writing and through the imagery he’s captured. To date, Angel’s travel blog and photography have been featured in a number of publications and websites, landing him numerous awards both locally and abroad. This has driven him to continue creating.

The Challenge: The Old Workflow to backup files - Purely Manual

The process behind backup and redundancy was certainly not new to Angel. Throughout his 15-year career in IT, backing up company data as well as putting measures in place to prevent or recover from data loss and corruption has always been a routine part of the job. Once he started to build his collection of work, He came to the realization that his data was invaluable, leading him to set up his own backup and redundancy process as a way to keep his files secure.

In the early stages of his blogging and photography career, this process was done manually. Initially, he had a 1 TB external hard drive serving as his primary storage solution, which was increased by another 1 TB drive soon after, which he purchased to function as a backup drive. The process during this time was purely manual, as he synchronized both drives by copying the contents to each other.

While this method worked, it was time-consuming and tedious while also at times not always performing backups regularly. This affected his workflow, particularly as he lost track of data that was already backed up. In several instances, the backup drive would just be reformatted and then have all data recopied to the backup drive so as to confirm everything is there. This method wasted time and was inefficient, as the number of drives continued to grow, and organizing data became more and more difficult to track.

The Solution:

It was evident that as his blog and photography portfolio continued to grow, his current methods of manual synchronization would no longer be effective in managing his backups, which leave him with a messy workflow across too many external drives. With this in mind, Angel recently shifted to a network-attached storage system, also known as a NAS device. Setting up the ASUSTOR AS-1002T v2 with Seagate IronWolf Pro drives. The ASUSTOR NAS, combined with the Seagate drives have made his storage and backup process significantly more streamlined.

The ASUSTOR AS-1002T v2 is a stylish, environmentally friendly, quiet, secure, and easy-to-operate NAS device that is an ideal home and work solution. This particular NAS is capable of holding up to two hard drives, providing RAID 1 data protection. RAID 1 offers redundancy through mirroring which means that data is written identically on two drives – essentially replicating his manual process above, but automatically and efficiently.

Setup and Installation

The installation process was a breeze. Installation of the AS-1002T v2 is tool-free, as the NAS is built with thumbscrews for easy installation and setup. He was able to install two 8 TB Seagate IronWolf Pro hard drives on his ASUSTOR AS-1002T v2 within minutes.

Setting up the NAS for use can be done in two ways - using a PC or a mobile device. Angel set it up on his PC, connecting the NAS to his wireless router. He then proceeded to download ASUSTOR Control Center and followed the onscreen instructions. Using AiMaster is equally as simple and can be done through WiFi. Once up and running, Angel is now able to control his NAS from the convenience of his mobile device anytime he wants.

My Improved Workflow: Easy and Effective Home-Based NAS

Using File Explorer in ADM, Angel was able to migrate all of his existing photos and files from all of his old hard drives to his NAS, ensuring centralized and secure data storage. Currently, his NAS is connected to his router which he also controls using his mobile device, significantly improving his workflow. After purchasing the exFAT license, he now able to upload and store photographs from memory cards in just a few clicks, helping him rest easy knowing that his data is backed up and further protected with redundancy.

Beyond Storage and Backup

While the primary purpose of a NAS is for data storage, ASUSTOR also provides a wide variety of features that are worth highlighting. ASUSTOR NAS units can be connected and synchronized to various public cloud storage services including Amazon S3, Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive which helps increase the protection of your data as backups must be made multiple times as well as in multiple locations. An ASUSTOR NAS can also be used as a multimedia server and also has over two hundred apps on App Central. Angel’s ASUSTOR AS-1002T v2 can act as a multimedia database, digital photo album, music player and streamer, iTunes server, download server and even a surveillance system, which helps him customize his work and increases convenience when working. Thus far, he has only managed to fill 15% of his eight terabytes of capacity, giving him plenty of freedom to adjust his needs.

Conclusion

Implementing an ASUSTOR NAS and Seagate IronWolf Pro drives have solved Angel’s storage issues while allowing for automated backups and synchronization of all of his photos and files. He no longer has to complete arduous backup tasks that consist repetitive drive copying and manual management of multiple drives as his files are now securely organized on a single protected NAS. It saves time, it’s efficient, and Angel could not recommend this setup more!

ASUSTOR NAS Advantages

• Backup Plan
• USB external backup
• Scheduled backups
• Easy-to-use UI
• Photo Gallery
• Easy sharing
• Wide variety of apps
• Quiet and efficient