this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2023
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Data Hoarder

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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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Hello everyone, how are you? Please excuse my lack of knowledge, but I need some advice.

I currently have around 5TB of data scattered between my OneDrive account and 2 separate SSDs. I want to create a reliable backup solution for all of my personal and work data.

I recently learned about the 3-2-1 backup strategy, which involves creating 3 copies of your data on 2 different types of storage, with 1 copy being kept off-site (correct me if I'm wrong).

However, in my situation, I work on a laptop that only has 1TB of internal storage and I don't rely on it for anything other than my active projects. Everything else is either on OneDrive or on the SSD.

So, my question is: how can I benefit from a 3-2-1 backup strategy? Should I invest in a NAS drive and store everything on it, while also using a cloud backup service like Backblaze to keep one copy off-site? And what about a 3rd copy?

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[–] WikiBox@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Consider upgrading the SSD in your laptop.

I use the famous rsync command line utility to sync folders between different filesystem. It is available for all major operating systems. Or you can use some alternative more easy to use GUI utility with similar or better functionality. Or you could use incremental/differential backups using almost any backup software, including the software you already have installed, by default, on your computer.

https://alternativeto.net/software/rsync/

You will need to invest some time and effort to learn and experiment with various backup software. Perhaps what you already have installed is enough? Perhaps you need to buy and/or install something more?

How I do this:

I use Linux and rsync. I wrote a script to create snapshot style rsync backups with hardlinks. Very similar to rsnapshot, but much simpler.

Using the script I can efficiently create what looks like timestamped full backup copies of the original files. But each copy actually only stores new or modified files since the previous backup. And hardlink in "fake" copies of unchanged files from the previous backup. This is a form of incremental backup masquerading as a full backup. Very easy to restore from. Just copy as if it is a normal copy. Since only new/modified files are stored, a backup is usually very fast and takes up very little storage. So I can afford to store many timestamped backups of my files.

My script also delete old backups so, for example, at most only 7 daily, 4 weekly and 4 monthly backup copies are retained.

I have two 4TB SSDs in my PC. The primary SSD is used to store the OS and user files as normal. The secondary SSD is used to store versioned snapshot copies of all the user files stored on the primary SSD. The OS and the download folder is excluded.

Every time I boot my PC, automatically a new backup snapshot copy is created of all my user files.

In addition I have two external multibay USB DAS. I manually trigger similar backup of specific folders on the primary SSD to the primary DAS, using the same script.

In addition I backup the primary DAS to the secondary DAS the same way.

In addition, I also store my most important files on my laptop, phone and on my tablet, as well as on a remote DAS. Currently about 300MB. I have a 512MB SD card in my tablet and a 1TB SD card in my phone.

The laptop also have two SSDs setup like my PC, but it is 2TB NVMe and 4TB SATA SSD.

In addition, copies of stuff like old scanned family photos are distributed to relatives.

For some less important files, like downloaded media, I may only keep a single backup copy. And only if I have bothered to normalize metadata and copy it to my media archive on my primary DAS.

For some more important files, like written documets, source code or financial documents, I store more than 3 copies. I also have copies on my phone and tablet and on remote storage.

I use another sync tool to copy prepared folders from the primary DAS to my android phone/tablet, FolderSync Pro. Also some media like selected downloaded ebooks and audiobooks.