1. The bottom line first: data stored in one place is not backed up
In the first half of 2026, more than 30% of the data recovery jobs we handled opened with the same sentence: "I do have a backup, but..." — but the backup drive was plugged into the same computer as the original; but the NAS sat under the same UPS in the same server room; but only the employee who quit knew the cloud account password. None of those are backups. They are just another copy of the data in the same basket.
There is exactly one real backup standard: the 3-2-1 rule — 3 copies of your data, on 2 different media, with 1 copy stored off-site. Simple to state, yet 90% of small and medium businesses fail the "1 off-site" part — and that is precisely the copy that saves you in a ransomware attack, a fire or a theft.
2. Three backup media: the real 2026 cost comparison
Take a 20-person trading company as an example: 8 office PCs plus one file server, roughly 4 TB of data worth protecting (accounting sets, customer records, scanned contracts, design source files), daily growth about 10 GB. What the three mainstream options actually cost:
| Option | Upfront | Annual running cost | Strengths | Weak spots |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business cloud sync (e.g. enterprise cloud drive plans) | ~0 | RMB 2,000–6,000 (20 seats) | Off-site by nature, access anywhere, version history | First full upload of 4 TB takes days; large-file limits; data lives in the cloud — a compliance concern for sensitive industries |
| Local NAS backup (Synology DS923+, 4-bay) | ~RMB 8,500 (unit 3,800 + two 8 TB enterprise drives 4,700) | ~RMB 300 electricity | Fast on LAN, large capacity, RAID1 capable, snapshots against ransomware | Still in the office — fire, theft and ransomware take it out together; needs an admin |
| Portable HDD cold backup (two 4 TB drives in rotation) | ~RMB 1,600 | ~RMB 800 (replacement cycle every 3 years) | Cheapest; the most complete physical isolation | Relies on human discipline — real execution rates are under 30%; idle drives still die |
What we actually recommend is a combination, not a choice of one: the NAS handles daily automated backups (scheduled jobs from the server and every PC), the cloud handles real-time off-site sync of the small critical core (accounting sets, contracts — the "lose it and the company stops" data, usually under 200 GB), and a portable drive does a monthly cold archive. All-in: about RMB 10,000 upfront, under RMB 1,000 per year — against market rates where a single 4 TB RAID5 recovery starts at RMB 20,000, that is cheap insurance.
3. The four traps most backup plans miss
- RAID is not backup.RAID1/RAID5 protects against physical drive failure — not against accidental deletion, ransomware, controller failure or human error. The array faithfully mirrors your mistaken delete to every disk. In March this year a mould factory in Panyu lost two drives from a RAID5 array; recovery cost RMB 24,000. They owned an old NAS meant for backups — it just had not been powered on for three months.
- Backed up ≠ recoverable. An unverified backup is Schrödinger's backup. Run a restore drill quarterly: pull a random file out of the backup and open it. Synology snapshots, Windows VSS, cloud version history — none of them count until you have actually clicked restore and seen the file open.
- Ransomware hunts your backups first.2026 ransomware routinely scans LAN SMB shares and encrypts the NAS along with everything else. Countermeasures: do not expose backup shares to the whole office network — restrict access to the backup server's IP; enable snapshots with a retention policy; keep the off-site copy (cloud or cold drive) isolated physically or by account.
- One person knowing the credentials is a single point of failure. Cloud backup accounts and NAS admin passwords must be known by at least two people or stored in the company password manager. We have handled a real case where a departing employee took the cloud account with them and three years of backups sat there — visible, unreachable.
4. Copy this by company size
| Size | Recommended setup | Budget reference |
|---|---|---|
| Solo / under 5 people | 2-bay NAS in RAID1 + cloud sync for core documents + one portable drive, monthly | ~RMB 4,000 upfront |
| 10–30 people | 4-bay NAS (RAID5 or SHR) + full scheduled coverage + enterprise cloud sync for finance/contracts + quarterly cold-drive rotation | RMB 10,000–15,000 upfront |
| 30+ / with servers | Backup server or NAS + an off-site replica (a backup node hosted in an IDC works) + snapshot policy + quarterly restore drills as written procedure | RMB 20,000+ upfront, hosting billed monthly |
5. Two real cases from the same month
A freight-forwarding company in Nansha got hit by ransomware on their file server: 1.2 TB of business data encrypted, the attackers demanding USD 30,000. Their "backup" was a NAS in the same office, joined to the same domain — encrypted right along with the server. They ended up paying RMB 18,000 for low-level data extraction, recovered about 70%, and lost the remaining customer correspondence for good — along with two major clients who walked.
The same month, a design studio in Panyu got hit too. Their architecture: workstations → daily NAS snapshots (30-day retention) → real-time cloud sync for core project files. Their IT spotted the anomaly, cut the network, rolled back from snapshot. Downtime: four hours. Data loss: zero. Recovery cost: nothing.
Similar companies. The only difference was a RMB 10,000 backup decision made a year earlier.
6. Three things you can do today
Whatever the budget, start now: first, list the data whose loss stops the company (usually under 200 GB) and put it on cloud sync today; second, check when your existing backup last ran successfully — anything over a month old is not a backup; third, run one restore drill — recover a file and open it. None of these cost money, and together they move you from naked to passing grade.
If the incident has already happened, stop writing to the failed disk immediately and follow the workflow on our data recovery page. For a full backup design, we are at No. 3-8 Jinlong Road, Dalong Street, Panyu — call 020-39029800 / +86-188-25126836. On-site surveys and design proposals are free for customers in Panyu and Nansha.