It's not perfect, but it's way better than not having any offsite backups at all. I have a deep distrust of Cloud storage services so for me I think this setup is the best solution I'm going to get.
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[1] I'm in the UK, so our typical 'sheds' are absolutely tiny - this one is not.
The data I really care about is encrypted right on my laptop,and I backup that encrypted data.
Use a solution that you can easily switch from one provider to another one, switch when there is any warning that the one you use might be in trouble. In the same line, make sure people in your family (or technically savvy friends) understand your system, are able to switch and know to pay the could provider bills if you're not around - unless it is ok for your entire storage to disappear when you die of course.
What if the drive gets stolen?
All data is encrypted before sending to it. If it gets stolen, well it is only one of the copies of the data (however it lives hidden under the dash, and is small enough that it looks like a piece of car equipment).
This was so I could use it to back up my Synology box to a set of external USB drives and retire the older Mac Mini I had been using. I'm still using the Mini...
In the case of the author, +1 for doing backups, but -1 for not establishing a chain of off-site copies (a safety deposit box at your bank, a relatives house that's some distance away, etc)
If a crappy NAS can run disk encryption, so can a raspberry pi. They're deceivingly potent.
Yes they can, and Golden Eye. I have just played Mario Kart with the kid before bedtime. It stutters a little if you have too many karts on screen, but that’s not a problem when you’re winning.
Lot fewer choices are available.
NUC is expensive. I wonder when will 8core ARM based NUC will arrive in the market.
No idea is NUC can be powered by Xiomi Mi 2i powerbank but a Raspberry Pi can be
Priorities:
1. Gigabyte ethernet
2. Small form factor NUC or smaller.
3. 8+ cores
4. Very low power consumption
It's an 8 core ARM SBC, with 2GB Ram, Gigabit ethernet on one USB3 bus, and a SATA connector on another USB3 bus. It can fully saturate spinning rush, though it might have problems with SSD drives. In any case, it will fully saturate your GigE link with even a slow harddrive.
It runs a standard Linux kernel, with the "driver" for the hardware added, which is why it requires a special build. Latest kernel version is 4.18. There is also an OMV build for it.
Mine uses around 4-8W, depending on how much the harddrive is being used. I've got a couple of them running as backup targets (Arq, Borg, etc) with a 4TB WD Red and Btrfs, and they've been rock solid.
If you need hardware AES, you should probably be looking elsewhere.
I have experimented with a very large number of devices between NUC and Pi.
While the best processors for such devices would be ARM processors (with Cortex-A76 or Cortex-A75), nobody offers adequate devices.
You can find only devices with obsolete slow ARM processors, e.g. RK3399, which are much faster than Pi but much slower than x86, or you can find development systems or modules with modern smartphone ARM processors, but those are much more expensive than a faster Intel NUC.
Therefore, for the moment the only sensible choices are devices with either Intel Gemini Lake processors or with Intel Y-Series processors.
The devices with Intel Y-Series processors are much faster, but they are also more expensive. While Zotac has presented at CES one such device, its price and time of availability are unknown.
For now, the only device available with Y-Series is "LattePanda Alpha". Considering that its price includes 8 GB RAM, 64 GB flash and the Windows licence (even if I wiped it and I installed Linux) it is cheaper than an i3 NUC where at the same price you have no memory.
It has everything a NUC has, except that it has one less USB port (it has 1 C + 3 A, while some NUCs have 1 C + 4 A). I have installed in its 2 M.2 connectors a NVMe SSD and a second Ethernet interface. The speed was excellent, because the Kaby Lake CPU was configured for 7 W TDP with 15 W TDP for the first 28 seconds. The included fan does not start unless you run a heavy workload and even then it is silent. The size is smaller than a NUC but larger than a pico-ITX board.
If you want something cheaper, or if you want, like me, both full-size DisplayPort & HDMI connectors (not DisplayPort on USB C), then you must choose a Gemini Lake device, i.e. either Zotac ZBOX PI335 Gemini Lake (with N4100, not to be confused with the obsolete ZBOX PI335 with N3350) or an ODROID H2.
The ODROID H2 is faster and possibly cheaper (depending on the memory you buy or you already have; ZBOX has soldered memory), but it is larger. ODROID H2 is NUC-sized while PI335 Gemini Lake is pico-ITX sized. ODROID H2 has 2 Ethernet, but PI335 Gemini Lake includes WiFi & BT and it comes in a closed case which will protect it in dusty environments (both have passive cooling). PI335-GK uses a 5 V power supply, so it should be easy to be powered from a power bank. The CPU TDP is configured for steady state 6 W and 15 W for the first 28 seconds. The idle CPU power is less than 2 W. I have not measured the total idle power of the computer. With the CPU halted, the power consumption should be much less, but I have not measured it.
Gemini Lake has a speed just a little less than a Snapdragon 845, but it is much faster than older ARM processors and than older Atom processors.
It's susceptible to macspoofing but I hope my Pi won't join a spoofed network.
This can be supplemented further by having it auto sync to a computer in your office whenever you pull into work. Add in some monitoring so you can get a phone alert if any of the synced copies are more than a few days out of date, and you are almost golden.