Ask HN: Where do you backup your local databases? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Where do you backup your local databases?

HN,

I have some at home projects that do not need to live on Google cloud or aws, and would only introduce costs in excess of running things locally.

I now have around 10gb of data (not a lot in this world) that I want to backup just in case something happens to my local box.

For code this problem is easy (git, bitbcuket etc). But for databases I am unclear.

What do people use? I could go the Google drive route, but I feel like there must be tons of options for a problem like this.

Thank you for any guidance.

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For things like this, I feel you've got three options.

You likely want your data offsite since your primary is onsite, so that means either a cloud provider (Google Drive, Amazon Drive, S3, etc.) which you can choose based on best-price, but as you mentioned, the downside is cost.

The second option is to find a friend or family with similar needs, and "trade" storage. You setup a NAS for them to write to. They setup a NAS for you to write to. You both encrypt everything and send it offsite. The upside of this approach is that it's essentially free apart from the allocation of storage space. The downside is that friends and family may not be as reliable as a paid service.

A third option is to buy a cheap portable hard drive, and periodically perform backups. The downside of this approach is that it's on you to perform this task regularly, and you'll always have some gap between when your last snapshot was performed and this gap may be meaningful if this isn't conducted with enough frequency.

Thanks. Google drive is a fine price for what I need +buffer.

3-2-1 rule: three copies, two of which live in the same place (one is the working copy, the other might be a snapshot on another machine or on a detachable hard drive) and the one off-site.

for he off-site, you might just want to go with S3, Backblaze's B2 or mega.co.nz (free up to 50GB). Actually, many web-hosting company nowadays will happily provide you with 20+gb for as little as 20-50$/year.

I just went and verify the last statement and turns out that hostgator will sell you unlimited hosting space: https://www.hostgator.com/web-hosting

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