On Thu, 2024-01-18 at 13:09 +0000, Michael Kjörling wrote: > > Definitely agree that a solid backup regimen (including regular > automated backups; at least one off-site copy _at least_ of critical, > hot data; and planning for the contingency that you need to restore > that backup onto a brand new system without access to anything on > your > current system -- think "home burns down at night" or "burglar" > scenario) is the _first_ step, and one that a great deal of people > still fail at.
Absolutely. I use a Raspberry Pi with an external USB drive for my off-site backups with Resitic. Seems to work fine for now, draws very little power, and the 4TB of a small 2.5" disk is plenty for my personal backups, when deduplicated. Still this setup probably is too complicated for many home users, where a cloud backup or similar makes more sense. > RAID is for uptime. If a week-long outage (to get replacement > hardware > and restore the most recent backup) and a day's worth of data loss is > largely inconsequential, as quite frankly it likely is for most home > users save for the cost of replacement hardware, For me the calculation is more or less "next workday to go to the local shop for a replacement hard drive" and a few hours to restore backups. Yes, if you depend on mail order, one week might be more realistic. Then I probably would keep a spare drive around even as a home user. > that's a very > different scenario from if that same outage costs $$€€¥¥ and could > destroy your livelihood; and consequently the choices made _should_ > likely be different. Of course. As soon as you have to pay several people's salaries needlessly while they sit around for access to their data, RAID makes more sense quickly. Still, it makes sense to think about what you can do yourself vs. what needs external work done, also because somebody external to repair a RAID might not show up all that quickly unless you've got some pre-negotiated contract. > _Mirrored backups_ makes very little sense to me. If a storage device > used for storage of backups fails prematurely, just toss it and get a > new one and make a new backup. Absolutely! Just make more backups, or more backups with different, independent strategies. As much as possible I try to do two independent systems (e.g. Restic doing time-based offsite backups, and a cron job doing a simple tar.gz file into some local drive or storage). /ralph
