
Ask HN: How do you manage personal data backups? - Roybot
The disk on my computer suddenly failed this morning - my strategy has basically been to manually backup my data to an external drive. It&#x27;s works I suppose - until I delay backing data up a few months. My last backup was in January.<p>What do you all do to backup all your data? Any recommendations for a better solution?
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glynnforrest
Firstly, sorry to hear about your backup woes. There's nothing worse than
losing data.

Three tricks that have worked for me:

1) Reduce the resistance in your brain to making backups

Easy wins can be made here without changing anything. Keep the external drive
ready to go on your desk at any time, have it start backing up as soon as you
plug it in, etc. Reduce the dissonance you feel in your brain to making
backups regularly.

2) Automate it as much as possible

Take the resistance entirely out of the equation by automating it. For
example, in your case you might want to try plugging the external drive into
an always-on raspberry PI, and use Syncthing to constantly send your files
there.

3) Have a process that keeps you accountable

You need something to make you feel guilty for not having backups, that
overpowers the resistance in your brain with shame! Even a recurring calendar
entry can work well.

I've taken it a step further by writing software to solve this very problem.
I've seen and heard about way too many backup failures in my short career, and
determined to help bring good backup practices to more people. Check out the
idea at [https://backupshq.com](https://backupshq.com) \- we'll be launching
privately soon and always interested in feedback on the idea.

~~~
Someone
“Keep _the_ external drive ready to go on your desk at any time”

Make that “Keep _an_ external drive”

If you only have one backup drive, and it’s on your desk, it can easily be
destroyed in a disaster that destroys the hard drive in the computer on your
desk.

You need at least one off-site backup.

~~~
glynnforrest
Agree 100%. 3 different copies of the data, on at least 2 different mediums,
with 1 off-site.

Reducing the obstacles to making any backups at all is a good first step
though!

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brudgers
My laptop has both an nvme drive and a 2.5 drive. I work off the nvme and
rsync onto the 2.5. Periodically, I rsync the 2.5 to an external drive.
Periodically, I backup the external drive to a second external drive. There's
a tote with some filled drives in the closet.

This works for me because it balances effort with the degree to which I care
about my data. It's not much work because I don't care that much. The reason I
don't care that much is because data is a burden. Data implies potential work
of the odious chore variety.

Losing data sucks for a little while. Managing archives sucks forever.

~~~
unixhero
Make sure you cycle some of those drives in the tote to an off-site location.
Your current strategy is not geo redundant!

~~~
brudgers
Based on my experience with 5.25 inch floppies, 3.5 inch floppies, 100 meg zip
disks. Qic 40 tapes, CD-R's, and DVR's I suspect the eventual offsite location
will be the nearest landfill.

~~~
unixhero
Uhm. Geo redundancy protects and makes your backup strategy robust for fire,
burglars and water leaks, earthquakes?

Sure, then after a few cycles like that the landfill or some other recycling
plant sounds like a good idea for the media :)

~~~
brudgers
In case of fire, I care about my dogs. The tote is water proof. It's
reasonably strong and though I live in earthquake country I live in a one
story structure. Six sigma's to the burglar who burgles old hard drives from a
closeted tote. I've long since accepted my more moral failings in regard to
best backup practices. YMMV.

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ColinWright
I have a three external drives and I cycle them around my two machines. Each
has a backup script that's run and forget, and takes about 20 minutes to run.
I run them most mornings while I have breakfast.

The directory structure is:

    
    
      +-- Machine1 -- +-- date0a --+-- Data
      |               +-- date1a --+-- Data
      |               +-- date2a --+-- Data
      |               +-- ...
      |
      +-- Machine2 -- +-- date0b --+-- Data
                      +-- date1b --+-- Data
                      +-- date2b --+-- Data
                      +-- ...
    

So for each machine there is a directory containing the backups. The backups
are named as the date/time when they were taken. This would seem slow and
wasteful, but each backup has hardlinks - where possible -- to the previous
backup. So the space taken by each new backup is only the files that have
changed, but each backup can be copied as a whole, and doesn't need to be
reconstructed in any way.

It has the benefits of differential backups, but without having to restore a
complete checkpoint and then roll forward with the updates.

rsync has options to do most of this for you. I can provide scripts if you're
interested, but I'm sure others will comment here will more slick and tidy
solutions. I do this because I understand it completely, it meets my needs,
and the backups are completely under my control.

I had a disk failure in February, regular backups saved me. I'm sorry you've
had this experience, and wish you luck in recovering.

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AnonC
Backups are useful only when all of the following are true:

* Done regularly in an automated fashion (if it’s manual, you _will_ forget); use what comes with your OS or buy a good paid backup application

* Keeps older versions with a particular scheme (if you only sync, then your backups will pick up bit rot, and unintended deletions which are manual or through malware)

* Have multiple backups on different media and different locations (external drives break, cloud services lose data, your friend’s house may get burgled); you must have local copies (fast) and online copies (physically remote)

I have backups on external drives, a NAS and a cloud backup.

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Raed667
I setup a Synology with an SSD. Baiscally it will copy anything on my Google
Drive automatically (i also set it up to not delete anything deleted from the
drive, just in case).

Now my laptop syncs my Documents directory to google drive and Synology picks
it up from there. At any given point in time, I have 3 copies of my most
critical files.

And the best part is after the setup, I don't have to think about it.

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quickthrower2
Backblaze is what I’m using. It’s pretty much set and forget so I don’t have
to worry or think about backups.

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firatcan
I basically use cloud services. I think, it's more convenient.

