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How should I do backups? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/selfhosted

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I have a server running Debian with 24 TB of storage. I would ideally like to back up all of it, though much of it is torrents, so only the ones with low seeders really need backed up. I know about the 321 rule but it sounds like it would be expensive. What do you do for backups? Also if anyone uses tape drives for backups I am kinda curious about that potentially for offsite backups in a safe deposit box or something.

TLDR: title.

Edit: You have mentioned borg and rsync, and while borg looks good, I want to go with rsync as it seems to be more actively maintained. I would like to also have my backups encrypted, but rsync doesn't seem to have that built in. Does anyone know what to do for encrypted backups?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

One of the main reasons why I avoid softwares such as Kopia or Borg or Restic or whatever is in fashion:

they go unmantained

they are not simple: so many of my frienda struggled restoring backups because you are not dealing with files anymore, but encrypted or compressed blobs

rsync has an easy mental model and has extremely good defaults

Going unmaintained is a non issue, since you can still restore from your backup. It is not like a subscription or proprietary software which is no longer usable when you stop to pay for it or the company owning goes down.

The design of restic is quite simple and easy to understand. The original dev gave multiple talks about it, quite interesting.

Imho the additional features of dedup, encryption and versioning outweigh the points you mentioned by far.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Going unmaintained is a non issue, since you can still restore from your backup. It is not like a subscription or proprietary software which is no longer usable when you stop to pay for it or the company owning goes down.

Until they hit a hard bug or don't support newer transport formats or scenarios. Also the community dries up eventually

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Until they hit a hard bug or don't support newer transport formats or scenarios. Also the community dries up eventually

That is why you test your backuo. It is unrealiatic, that in a stable software release there is suddenly, after you tested your backup a hard bug which prevents recovery.

Yes unmaintained software will not support new featueres.

I think you misunderstood me. You should not use unmaintained software as your backup tool, but IMO it is no problem when it suddenly goes unmaintained, your backup will most likely still work. Same with any other software, that goes unmaintained, look for an alternative.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It is unrealiatic, that in a stable software release there is suddenly, after you tested your backup a hard bug which prevents recovery.

How is unrealistic? Think of this:

day 1: you backup your files, test the backup and everything is fine
day 2: you store a new file that triggers a bug in the compression/encryption algorithm of whatever software you use, now backups are corrupted at least for this file Unless you test every backup you do, and consequently can't backup fast enough, I don't see how you can predict that future files and situations won't trigger bugs in a software

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

We talk about software that is considered stable. That has verification checks for the backup. Used by thousands of ppl. It is unrealistic.