* What backup tools and services do you use?
* Where are your backups stored?
* How does your backup workflow deal with multiple devices, especially phones?
* How much does the setup cost you?
Thanks.
- "normal" backups (i.e., if I deleted a file in my computer, delete it also in my backup)
- archival backups (i.e., never delete files from my backup, keep always a copy of everything)
Some of my $HOME directories are selected for "normal" backups (e.g., images I may have in my computer, the Downloads directory, etc.), while others are selected for archival backups (i.e., source code, important files, music, etc.).
I connect one hard drive at a time and run `./backup`. I usually backup my stuff twice per week or so. I check if my backups are fine every month or so. I don't backup to the cloud (although I have some stuff I don't mind losing like music, images, movies that I store in Google drive/Dropbox/etc. I also have some code repositories in GitLab/GitHub, but again I don't mind if I suddenly have no access to their cloud versions).
But above all, I try to delete stuff as much as I can. My goal is to end up with a minimum amount of digital stuff (let's say, less than 4GB) that I can copy/carry easily. I want to be able to live without worrying about losing music/images/pictures/documents/books/code/etc.
Costs can vary wildly but take a look at B2 pricing and extrapolate. Synology can act as a time machine target for Apple devices.
Personally, if I wanted to do something on a budget, I would probably get some hard drives and periodically add stuff to them and then replace the drives on a schedule to mitigate failure.
When I can afford a house in a year or two, I plan to setup a Synology NAS.
I have Backblaze also running on my laptop (~$70/year)
I have a Synology NAS that is independently backed up to an external drive that is switched out regularly. The NAS takes backups of some online services, like Cloud storage, GitHub and email (some of these are native Synology apps, some custom scripts). The cost was probably around €450 with 2 drives.
I used to backup the NAS to the cloud, but stopped as it felt like overkill. I also used to sync between NAS, laptop and phone with Resilio but came to realise that I rarely actually needed it and it was a lot of extra faff.
Finally, I manually backup my 1password vaults, important backup codes for 2fa and my primary public/private key to a usb stick that lives in storage. I do this probably every 3 to 6 months or so.
HP ml310, with 4x 3tb drive, btrfs raid1, 6tb total space
1 external 4tb drive for important data backup
Backups, mostly semi manual Rsync
Phone: root, Termux, Rsync
Data sync, Syncthing
In EU reasonable HP ml310 can be 120€, and there are several 3tb HDD lot auctions, 140€. 100€ for a 4tb 2.5 drive. Total 360€ for setup. Plus 100€ for electricity and 40€ for parts maintenance. Total 140€ every year
I also use the server for VMs, docker, Pihole...
Backblaze and rclone also looks interesting for a cloud copy
There isn't much workflow to talk about. Grab the drive, move files, put away the drive.
I admit, there is no style to this solution. But it works nicely for me.
What kind do you have? Are there any brands you'd recommend?
Now that I'm not in IT, I just use BackBlaze, and leave my external drive plugged in to this laptop at night, so it gets backed up too.
My only issue is that pushing the data to the server can use a lot of data at the wrong time, and pulling the data only works if the device is at a specific IP.
On my phone, I use FolderSync, which works just like rsync. It never failed me.
The backups are collected and organised by my home server, and rsynced to other servers.
copy 2 is on my online fileserver (xeon with ecc cache, ecc ram, zfs doing regular scrubs in zraid3 for 3 disk fault tolerance) I do semi-regular snapshots of the ZFS filesystem.
copy 3 is on offline, powered down and disconnected fileserver (connected once every few months, to sync with fileserver, also zfs, but only 1 disk fault tolerance)
This is not quite by the book, since there IS a window where both fileservers are powered on at the same time, the risk is somewhat mitigated by them being in two phyiscal locations.
storage - workstations have copy of data via syncthing. Archival storage is on hp microservers
Backup workflow - daily rsync from workstations, syncthing for frequently used data. Microservers are backed up on external usb disk enclosures (zfs snapshots). Phones are backed up via syncthing also
Cost - electricity at home / offoce and swapping dead disks
My goal was encrypted offsite backup for critical stuff and photos, local redundancy for everything, not exposing my local machines to the internet, and most importantly that my wife can use this without understanding it or learning new software.
I have an old microatx desktop ("NAS") repurposed in a large tower case with a PCIE SATA card that runs zraid2 with 6x4TB drives. I rent a VPS in a Canadian datacentre for ~$150cdn/year for offsite backup. I try to treat our laptops/desktops as replaceable appliances in that they have no important data on them and image them when they're setup.
Each computer has three network shares: - M:\ for multimedia on NAS, - O:\ for photos on NAS (in retrospect P:\ would have been more logical), - T:\ for documents (VPS via seadrive as detailed below).
Nothing that matters is saved anywhere else. I moved my wife's laptop photos music documents folders to appropriate locations on the NAS.
For documents: I run seafile-pro on the VPS (free license) and the seadrive client on our computers. Task scheduler runs subst on login so that T:\ points to the libraries folder. This way our laptops can access documents from anywhere at T:\. I set up the library hierarchy, e.g. Name, Finances, Work, etc. Libraries are encrypted on the VPS. She has no idea what the backend is or how to access it but if needed I can get to file history, trash, and sharing over internet. (Note encryption disables full text search via the web interface.)
My NAS also runs a seafile-pro but in a realtime backup mode. It can seamlessly become the primary server with minimal effort and a DNS change. The NAS also pulls a nightly copy of the sql db + storage files off the VPS over sshfs just in case. Finally, the seadrive client on our machines is also set to cache a copy of most libraries as a last ditch backup effort.
For photos: It's all under O:\ in \year\description\ if sorted or \Phones\name\DCIM\. Both phones have FolderSync Pro copy DCIM & a few other folders nightly into a O:\Phones\name\DCIM\YYYMMDD\ type structure if on home wifi. I found out the hard way we never save phone photos so set this up. We can sort later if needed. Cron schedules an encrypted borg backup weekly over sshfs to the VPS. I've tested mounting/recovering this and left printed instructions + password on accessing it with family in case something were to happen to me as these are important.
For general multimedia: I don't care if I lose it. It local on the NAS with ZFS to tolerate drive failures. I can VPN home if travelling.
For archiving paper documents: I break this out separately as I've been trying to go fully paperless. I'm a physician and last year around tax time I had an inch of paper to give my accountant. The printer/scanner has a scan button. I rigged it to send to paperless-ng which is running on the NAS using brscan and a script to handle 2-sided+PDF+OCR. My wife knows how to push the button and navigate a couple scanner menus. She can also save documents to O:\Add to Paperless which is pinned in Quick Access and knows about Print To PDF. I also setup scan@ourdomain if I need it. I setup the correspondents/tags/categories and expected to have to do all it but she figured out quickly how to use the interface via browser after seeing me go through it with the existing tags. This is a recent addition so it's just backed up with the photos borg backup script. I'm still thinking on how to best integrate it into seafile but it works.
For contacts/sharing calendar: I run nextcloud on the VPS. From her point of view her phone and laptop's emclient and can see and edit my calendar. The VPS pulls a nightly database + copy of /home/nextcloud for backup although admittedly I haven't tested restoring this backup.
There are a couple other fun things like mosquito+owntracks for self hosted location sharing and we share a keepass db via seafile's webdav. Unrelated I also set up a both@ourdomain email which has been great for for shared accounts, shopping, and bills... highly recommended.
I've been tinkering with this for a decade and I'm very happy with it. I started with a 4-bay qnap but found it too restrictive. Since I've moved (a new set of) drives once from a 2u server that died and just today had to resliver my first faulted drive all without data loss.
Hopefully this inspires someone to roll their own!