Backups

[rejectconvenience]

Alright Linux friends, what's your backup regimen look like? I am coming from macOS and Time Machine, and I haven't been able to find a solution that's similar. I have a NAS I'd like to send the backups to, there should be plenty of storage on there for now... actually, that might not be true anymore.. this is a 4TB SSD in this computer so I might need to rethink things... But I do need a good backup solution, so what do y'all use?

[Crazyroostereye]

Files I usually want to keep are directly written to my Nextcloud or are in Synced folders in the Nextcloud or in Git repos on remotes. But I do also use the ZFS file system which makes periodic immutable Snapshots to which I can restore to when stuff happens, this is not a Backup tho.

But a tool I used to use for Backups was Pika Backup, as far as I understand Time Machine, they are similar. It's based on Borg backup a standard Backup system and allows backing up to remotes (SSH/SFTP/SMB) or local Locations. It has encryption functionality, an integrity check and periodic Automatic Backups.

I highly recommend it.
Another tool I heard about, but never used is Timeshift.

[drmollytov]

I have an external hard drive I back up my computer drives to once a month. It gets copied to a second external hard drive four times a year. That second drive lives at my parents' house. The first one lives in my fire safe.

I just don't have much in the way of files, so I don't find this inconvenient. Really critical stuff also gets backed up to a 256GB thumb drive that also lives in the fire safe. My current projects are always in CryptPad, so I don't worry too much about them.

I know I could pay for a cloud service, but I don't want to leave my data on someone else's computer.

[zonk]

I have a script on my main PC which uses rsync to back up my files to a NAS running TrueNAS CORE. This script has a cron job to run nightly. An hour later, another rsync task runs on the NAS to back up to two remote NASes I have strategically placed at the houses of friends and family. The local NAS communicates with the remote systems via VPN which is hosted at my house. I also have an external HDD that I manually back up to once a month just in case my local NAS explodes and I need my files without having to slowly download them from a remote NAS.

[nekiwo]

3-2-1 backup rule: 3 copies, 2 mediums, 1 off-site

what i do:
- 1 copy on main computer
- 1 copy on local SMB server/desktop
- 1 copy on unlimited school google drive

no RAID, no special NAS image, no WD Red, simple but effective.

[Stefen_Maxwell]

My backup routine is to basically store my home directory on a hard drive every time I distro hop. It is not ideal.

[Lasso3049]

Timeshift for system files, and Pika Backup for personal files. Both allow you to schedule backups, so once set up, you rarely have to think about them.

If you make some massive system changes or an update breaks the system, Timeshift makes it really easy to restore to a previous snapshot and even regenerates GRUB and other relevant boot files. It makes full snapshots instead of incremental backups, but for system files it's not much of a problem since those don't take up that much space, and it also makes restoring to a previous state significantly faster. It's a great program that most Linux users should use, and is installed on Linux Mint by default.

Pika Backup is an incremental backup program, and is therefore much better to use for your home folder. It supports backing up to both local drives and also cloud services, supports encrypting your backups, and has a nice interface for exploring the files of your backups and restoring them.

[gquirt]

I'm running a Linux distro with BTRFS, so on device backups are completely automated. For other backups, I've got an old computer running CasaOS and Syncthing. Getting the docker containers pointed to a secondary drive can be a pain if you don't know what you're doing. But there is a guide on the CasaOS Discord/forum.

I highly recommend both CasaOS and Syncthing if you want a home server without having to learn enough to be a sysadmin.

With Syncthing, my documents are automatically synced between my desktop, server, and laptop. Once it's set up, you just let it do it's thing in the background.

[Crazyroostereye]

@gquirt I would be careful using syncthing as a Backup system. Because when you delete something off of one Device, you Delete it of off all Devices. Therefor you are not keeping a Backup. Syncthing is a Syncing tool not a Backup tool. A trick around that, is to have one of the Syncthing Devices, for example your Server, Periodically take a copy of the Syncthing folder and Store it somewhere.

I sadly lost already Files to Syncthing Syncing.

[mimi]

do you guys have any tips for someone who can't afford a complex backup system atm? :p