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Backup software recommendation? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Schedar@beehaw.org to c/foss@beehaw.org

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Does anyone have any recommendations for good backup software? My use case is pretty simple. I have an external usb drive I want to backup to every so often. Both the source and backup drives are 8TB capacity (I’m not even close to using the full capacity yet)

Normally the backup drive is left unplugged but I want to be able to plug it in run the backup software to copy across anything new then unplug it again for storage.

Simple file backup (not looking to do a full bootable OS drive backup or anything)

Thank you

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[–] Haui@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The question really is what data you‘re trying to back up.

Would you be annoyed, sad, very sad or potentially ruined if that data goes away?

Depending on your threat level, you should choose one that strikes the balance between cost and reliability.

If you don’t have tons of data and it’s not insanely important data, use something free to encrypt/stripe it over free google/dropbox/onedrive accounts.

If it is insanely important data, you can try tarsnap. I just heard of it but stripe uses it for their credit card data.

I personally use idrive. Has worked well so far but is paid as well and I didnt have to restore yet.

Good luck.

[–] Schedar@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just to answer your question:

It's quite a lot of data but not insanely important, it would be really inconvenient if I lost it but far from the end of the world. I'm looking at local backup because in the event of an entire hardware drive failure having to download all the data again over the internet would take an absolute age. Not that a cloud backup isn't also good (I am using backblaze) in case the local backup drive also failed at the same time.

I do however have other things that are really important which I already backup with multiple levels of cloud and local storage (such as family photos, secure documents etc) - I will check out tarsnap as well though as it sounds interesting Thank you

[–] Haui@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for clarifying! It sounds like you are fairly experienced already. I‘m pretty certain you will figure out the right solution for yourself.

To expand a little on my setup and backup philosopy: basically 3-2-1 backup strategy, 3 copies, 2 types of media, 1 off site

I run my bulk storage on two wd red 8 tb in raid 1 (2 copies)
I backup the documents, personal photos and videos on an encrypted iDrive storage (3rd copy, 2 types of media, 1 off site)
I also have my dvds ripped on my drives but they are „backed up“ physically in the basement

The only thing I still need go take care of is backing up my system itself which is still elusive to me.

In case you need cheap bulk backup storage. I chose iDrive because it is very cheap per TB compared to other cloud storage providers and you can encrypt everything (you could also encrypt locally and copy it somewhere but thats out of my scope rn)

Have a good one! :)