Hi, currently I have a almost none backups and I want to change them. I have a PC with Nextcloud on 500gb ssd that I also use for gaming (1tb system drive). Nextcloud would be used to store/sync images, documents, contacts, and calendar from my phone and laptop. I also have an old pc that has 2x 80gb, 120gb, 320gb, and 500gb hdd. I want to use it for other backups like OS snapshots, programming projects, etc. but its not a big hdd but a lot of small hdds. Should I store each backup on 2 drives? Can I automate this? Any suggestions would be helpful.

  • @vegetaaaaaaa@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15•1 year ago

    Don’t use a synchronized folder as a backup solution (delete a file by mistake on your local replica -> the deletion gets replicated to the server -> you lose both copies).

    old pc that has 2x 80gb, 120gb, 320gb, and 500gb hdd

    You can make a JBOD array out of that using LVM (add all disks as PVs, create a single VG on top of that, create a single LV on top of that VG, create a filesystem on top of that LV, format it as ext4 filesystem, mount this filesystem somewhere, access it over SFTP or another file transfer protocol).

    But if the disks are old, I wouldn’t trust them as reliable backup storage. You can use them to store data that will be backed up somewhere else. Or as an expendable TEMP directory (this is what I do with my old disks).

    My advice is get a large disk for this PC, store backups on that. You don’t necessarily need RAID (RAID is a high availability mechanism, not a backup). Setup backup software on this old PC to pull automatic daily backups from your server (and possibly other devices/desktops… personally I don’t bother with that. Anything that is not on the server is expendable). I use rsnapshot for that, simple config file, basic deduplication, simple filesystem-backed backups so I can access the files without any special software, gets the job done. There are a few threads here about backup software recommendations:

    In addition I make regular, manual, offsite copies of the backup server’s backups/ directory to removable media (stash the drive somewhere where a disaster that destroys the backup server will not also destroy the offsite backup drive).

    Prefer pull-based backup strategies, where hosts being backed up do not have write access to the backup server (else a compromised host could alter previous backups).

    Monitor correct execution of backups (my simple solution to that, is to have cron create/update a state file after correct execution, and have the netdata agent check the date of last modification of this file. If it has not been modified in the last 24-25hrs, something is wrong and I get an alert).

    • @chevy9294@monero.townOPEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      Thank you for your detailed response! I will checkout JBOD arrays, if that wont work I will probably buy newer larger disks.

      • poVoqEnglish
        0•1 year ago

        btrfs has this built in with additional redundancy, so that is by far the better option to combine multiple drives into one large pool.

      • @vegetaaaaaaa@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0•1 year ago

        JBOD here just means “show me this bunch of old drives as a single drive/partition”. It’s just a recommendation to at least get something out of these drives - but don’t use this as backup storage , these drives are old and if a single one fails, you lose access to the whole array.

        If you’re not sure what to do with them, just get an USB/SATA dock or adapter, and treat them as old books: copy not-so-valuable stuff on them, and store them in a bookshelf with labels such as Old movies, Wikipedia dumps 2015-2022…

        Definitely get a good, new drive for backup storage. And possibly another one for offsite backups.