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South Central MN | Simplest way is to hook it to your computer. This can be done via wifi, ethernet cable, or USB depending on your scanner and computer features. If you wanted to make sure you have enough storage you could connect an external hard drive to the computer and scan to that in order to save space on the computer. The last and in my opinion best route if you don't want 3rd party cloud storage is to set up a personal server. Depending on what server you get, this will basically create your own cloud service so you can access you files from anywhere. However, setting up your network to make sure it is secure was pretty challenging.
If you are going to start cataloging files electronically for record keeping you better have a very good backup protocol in place. I ended up setting up one of these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075N1Z9LT/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_lsezDbT9JG...
I also had to buy 4 hard drives to go into it.
Now that I have it set up, drives 1&2 are set up so the server writes identical copies of every file to both drives, but they appear as a single drive when I look at them in file explorer. I call this one the working drive (:w) . Drives 3&4 are also set up to write duplicate copies to each other, and are viewed as a single archive drive (:a) . So, daily files get written to the working drive and then get backed up to the archive drive every 24 hours.
I'm sure that was all very confusing, but if we follow the life of a file thru the system the redundancy becomes a little more clear.
1. File X gets created and saved to :w.
2. :w contains 2 duplicate drives, so you now have files :w/1/x and :w/2/x. This is done so that in the event drive 1 burns up, you still have the copy on drive 2.
3. At midnight every night, :w is backed up to :a. :a contains 2 duplicate drives, so you now have files :a/1/x and :a/2/x.
4. You now have 4 identical copies of file x. In addition, the archive drive will make a new backup of the file every day and store them for 20 days. So, you will end up 2 new copies of the file every day. This is useful in the event you want to go back to an older version of a file due to file corruption or virus issues.
5. My ultimate goal is to set up another disk station at my parents house. I can then back up my :w drive to this disk station to have an off site backup, but my internet connection is too slow for that right now.
Now that I have it all set up, I can access my files from anywhere I have an internet connection, including my phone. Was very handy this spring for looking up crop plans or getting budgets at banker meetings. Definitely not a project for someone scared of computers or learning how to setup a secure network and it doesn't come cheap but I'm very happy with it so far. | |
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Laser printer recommendation
