Which other disk backup solution do you recommend other than Clonezilla?
I’m going to make a backup of 2TB SSD today. I will use clonezilla mainly because that’s all I know. But do you recommend any other ways for any reason?
I want to keep the process simple and easy. And I will likely take backup once a month or so repeatedly. It doesn’t have to be ready all the time. If you need more clarification, ask away.
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My method requires that the drives be plugged in at all times, but it's completely automatic.
I use rsync from a central 'backups' container that pulls folders from other containers and machines. These are organized in
/BACKUPS/(machine/container)_hostname/...
The /BACKUPS/ folder is then pushed to an offsite container I have sitting at a friends place across town.
For example, I backup my home folder on my desktop which looks like this on the backup container
/BACKUPS/Machine_Apollo/home/dork/
This setup is not impervious to bitflips a far as I'm aware (it has never happened). If a bit flip happens upstream, it will be pushed to backups and become irrecoverable.
I see. This is more of a file system backup right? Do you recommend it over full disk backup for any reason? I can think of saving space.
I recommend it over a full disk backup because I can automate it. I can't automate full disk backups as I can't run dd reliably from a system that is itself already running.
It's mostly just to ensure that I have config files and other stuff I've spent years building be available in the case of a total collapse so I don't have to rebuilt from scratch. In the case of containers, those have snapshots. Anytime I'm working on one, I drop a snapshot first so I can revert if it breaks. That's essentially a full disk backup but it's exclusive to containers.
edit: if your goal is to minimize downtime in case of disk failure, you could just use RAID
I can’t automate full disk backups as I can’t run dd reliably from a system that is itself already running.
Can't you do a snapshot like VSS does on windows and back that up on a running system? I assume with a filesystem that supports snapshots that would be possible.
I'm sure there's ways to do it, but I can't do it and it's not something I'm keen to learn given that I've already kind of solved the problem :p
I’m on a similar boat except I might have less time resource available in the future cause I’m getting a job.
Hopefully I could automate full disk backup because if something like Immich breaks, I can just load up from the backup drive. My family also use the services so… I think it’s great you brought up RAID but I believe when Immich or any software mess things up it’s not recoverable right?
I think it’s great you brought up RAID but I believe when Immich or any software mess things up it’s not recoverable right?
RAID is not a backup, no. It's redundancy. It'll keep your service up and running in the case of a disk failure and allow you to swap in a new disk with no data loss. I don't know how Immich works but I would put it in a container and drop a snapshot anytime I were to update it so if it breaks I can just revert.