On 16/06/20 08:34, Dale wrote: > Right now, I'm backing up to a 8TB external drive, sadly it is a SMR > drive but it works. As I go along, I'll be breaking down my backups. > Example. I may have my Documents directory, which includes my camera > pics, backed up to one drive. I may have videos backed up to another > drive. Other directories may have to be on other drives. The biggest > things I don't want to lose: Camera pics that could not be replaced > except with a backup. Videos, some of which are no longer available. > That requires a large drive. It currently is approaching 6TBs and I > have several videos in other locations that are not included in that. > Documents which would be hard to recreate. Since I have all my emails > locally, I don't want to lose those either. Just a bit ago, I was > searching for posts regarding smartctl. I got quite a few hits.
Streaming to an SMR should be fine. Doing a cp to a new directory, or writing a .tar file, or stuff like that. What is NOT fine is anything that is likely to result in a lot of head-seeking as files and directories get modified ... Remember that when backing up - so a btrfs with snapshots, or an lvm snapshot with rsync in place, is most definitely not a good idea with SMR. Cheers, Wol
