@fribbledom I need to figure out a backup system for the few bits of state (mostly my diary) that aren't replicated elsewhere. preferably something that I can multihome both to my rpi and to something in the cloud.
@fribbledom Two kinds of people in this world. Those that have lost data and now backup and those that don't back up yet.
@fribbledom automatic cloud backups are daily, backups to an external hard drive are, in theory, once a month
@fribbledom All the content that needs to remain available is synchronized to multiple physical locations; the computer itself isn’t backed up at all.
Never, because all relevant data is mirrored on my server. And this one performs daily backups. ;-)
A disk RAID can be seen as a sort of backup?
I'm pretty happy with that!
@fribbledom Most of my important unique data isn't on private computer (on backed-up file server or in multiple places). I do a proper backup before traveling w/ the computer just so restoration is easier if it gets lost/stolen/broken on the trip.
A RAID certainly helps, but by no means does it count as a backup. You'd be surprised how many people lose their data during a RAID recovery 😅
@fribbledom Monthly whole-disk backup, but Dropbox holds most of my permanent files.
@fribbledom How about many times a day automatically? But the real question: How often do you test restorability of backups?
@fribbledom daily, because 'not after last time' for like the 3rd time
@fribbledom And for folks looking to get started with off-site backups, https://rsync.net/products/attic.html is the best deal around. 100GB for $18/year
@fribbledom Hourly, assuming I haven't added a bunch of stuff that takes multiple hours for the online backup portion to complete.
@fribbledom almost weekly, I have a backup from other backup that made backup from the primary backup. 😅 😎 the same to my nextcloud files
@fribbledom @DialMforMara bonus reply: I don’t store any valuable data on my computer, it’s all directly accessed from my NAS which is backed up multiple times throughout the day and week!
@fribbledom Backed up constantly onsite via Time Machine and offsite via Backblaze!
@fribbledom I run a BackupPC server and back up all the Linux machines in my house and remote VMs daily, plus sync that to a pair of laptop drives to be rotated off-site. I hate losing data.
@fribbledom
I honestly changed the theme for my computer: os is autoinstalled, dotfiles managed by yadm, projects managed via git, email via imap, contacts in nextcloud, password-store is basically git, and big files on sftpfs. no need to back it up. 😎
@fribbledom most stuff I couldn't do without is on cloud storage or a source control provider of some kinid
@fribbledom My backup system is basically a distributed set of files which are on all machines, and um... most other things I use _from_ backups.
I am atypical.
@fribbledom I mean I don't *like* to live dangerously, but here we are
@fribbledom sometimes the power goes out and then I turn it on again to bring it backup.
@fribbledom It was every four hours a bunch of years back and then daily for a couple years after that, but now that the entire data set is larger than a TB it’s inconvenient with my current backup tool to do more often that once a week-ish. Though, a lot of it is redundantly synced in realish time to various cloud providers and my NAS when it is working (TODO Fix NAS), and a couple of the cloud providers have limited backup snapshots too.
@fribbledom is all of the above an option?
I have Timeshift set to make daily, weekly, and monthly backups.
Back when I primarily ran Windows, I would make a monthly image of my system drive so I could restore quickly and easily in an emergency.
@fribbledom Really today it is needed more than ever : backup is the only way to recover when a ransomware has done it's job.
On Windows10 it's included, on Linux was ever there, on macOS it has cool graphic effects...
@fribbledom tbh I keep most of my "private data" either on a NAS (a.k.a. my single point of failure) and everything else is so small that I keep on a nextcloud (I know, nextcloud ain't no backup or so. works for me.). Last but not least I also try to push my code regularly to my git cloud provider. So most stuff is sorta backed up?
Every other month I'd say, but only what really matters. I just manually drag and drop folders onto hard drives after deleting the previous backups, one on the same computer and others on my shelves. And every few years I fill a bunch of DVDs. It makes me keep a neatly organized content.
It's tedious and probably inefficient but without huge consequences so far. I guess when trouble comes it's really painful anyways.
@fribbledom
But my personal computer is my professional computer as well so...
@fribbledom Almost never. My SSD can fail right now, it wouldn't be a big issue,
there is no important data on it.
Configuration files, keys, passwords, etc. are backup-ed separately.
This also helps me to change my computer/system faster when needed. For example before a trip. I can just install a new GNU/Linux distribution and format the SSD.
So I am a bit used to that.
@fribbledom Once every 3 months, but there's only one copy of most things.
I don't have a backup drive though!
@fribbledom Constantly, as all the stuff that matters is synched to the cloud. Synching back to a second physical computer happens more or less weekly.
@fribbledom daily by script for important things because otherwise it's more like monthly or before trips, whichever comes sooner
@fribbledom
I don’t have any device to save them… :/
@fribbledom zfs snapshots every hour, remote zfs replication every night
@fribbledom pretty much never, because all the important docs are auto-synced to my nextcloud anyway
@fribbledom
I honestly don't know how to backup my computer without spending lots of money. I copied my /home on an external hard drive recently because I was messing with my filesystem, but I can't do that all the time. I have several terabytes of data. What should I do?
@fribbledom Raid-6, dedicated NAS. Linux-compatible filesystem in case it needs to be mounted on other hardware if the original fails. Multiple redundancy.
@fribbledom I don't backup my computer, but all my programming projects are on Github as well, and documents are synced to a cloud service (not a backup, just sync). If I lose anything else, (I think) I wouldn't care too much.
@fribbledom I aspire to do a weekly full backup, but the reality is monthly at best. My do have a ‘current projects’ folder that syncs continuously with Dropbox, so that’s a layer of protection for the critical stuff.
@fribbledom I never do a full system backup, but anything I can't just re-install from scratch is either under source control or in a private OwnCloud instance. Degaussing my apartment would be inconvenient but not unrecoverable.
I feel like manual backups are a precaution from another era, like parking your hard drive or running a screen saver to prevent burn-in.
@fribbledom Not often; most of the stuff I absolutely rely on is already in the cloud.
@fribbledom In theory, daily encrypted backups to my NAS. In practice, some days get skipped because I'm away. Oh, well.
The NAS has daily encrypted encrypted backups offsite, effectively backing up the daily backups of my main computer.
It's by no means perfect, but I figure it's pretty good for a low-cost/low-effort thing.
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@fribbledom Follow-on poll: how often do you test if you can actually restore a backup? :D
@fribbledom Daily/automatically. CrashPlan is a good solution for me. It's highly configurable, relatively inexpensive, runs on linux, and was effective when I wiped my hard drive that one time.
@fribbledom All of my important data is either on a reputable cloud provider or else on my home RAID-5 with a cold spare sitting on top of it.
I guess there's a tiny chance that something could be irretrievably lost, but those odds are good enough for me.