• Automatic Time Machine to a single external USB-C disk: Cumbersome to selectively restore from, the UI can be clunky, but it has saved my ass in some tight situations.
• All files stored on iCloud Drive: No history. Files may be lost during buggy betas like Catalina’s. Deleted files can usually be restored from the web UI.
• Private GitHub repositories for anything that involves text (code, notes): May get unexpectedly removed by Microsoft at their whim, e.g. for making statements against China.
• Manual copies of entire user home folders to different external disks: Hard to do incremental backups.
I use https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ and a local (on-site) NAS. I have yet to find a good solution for off-site backups, privacy concerns prevent me from using the usual (commercial) options.
So, I recently setup this system for personal use so I haven't had a full opportunity to use it and I don't have too much data so it might be a bit too tailored to my use case but here it goes.
I use Resilio[1] to sync my laptop, phone (on an SDCard) and Scaleway VPS, this works really great because i have my files at all times on 3 systems and there is a very low chance they will all fail at the same time. My photos get uploaded instantly from the phone and I can then sort them from the laptop.
And then I use Cloudberry to backup to BackBlaze B2 to make sure that if anything goes wrong with my files and it gets synced across the system I can still recover them.
The whole setup costs me probably less than 3€ a month(2.49 for the VPS and a handful of cents for the B2) and gives me the same functionality I was getting from just using Dropbox for 12€.
I can also throw a few more services on the VPS to enhance file functionality at no cost, which I would not be able to do any other way.
As a VPS I use Scaleway I use C1 instance with 75GB, I'm sorry I misquoted it, it comes to 3.49€ a month. (+.5€ / 25GB)
BackBlaze is 0.005/GB. I have around something like 20GB of photos and the rest is documents which will take maybe 1 more GB so it's really not that expensive.
FWIW, Resilio used to be rock-solid for me on Android, and the latest version's got show-stopper issues (doesn't sync after a while, then refuses to quit, requiring me to reboot my phone to make it work again) (Both Android 10 on Pixel2 and Android 9 on OnePlus)
My laptop (1Tb MBP) is backed up via both Carbon Copy Cloner (for a bootable backup) and Timemachine (for a snapshot backup) to a USB-C external RAID enclosure:
I use Resilio Sync to sync my documents folder between my laptop and a Synology NAS (with RAID). My NAS also downloads periodic backups of AWS S3, email, Github etc.
This NAS is backed up locally to a standard external drive as well as Synology's own cloud backup service "C2" using Hyper Backup
I have 5 TB backed up on BorgBase[1] and use Vorta[2] to add new data on desktops (macOS and Linux) and Dan's Borgmatic[3] on servers. (They all use Borg[4] in the background.)
This is a great setup because I get notified of failed backups and the data is compressed, encrypted and deduplicated before upload. So it's quite fast and efficient. I can also run it in append-only mode, so old backups are safe.
Since I'm involved with both projects, BorgBase and Vorta, please don't take my word for it and test it yourself ;-)
20 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 25.7 ms ] thread• Automatic Time Machine to a single external USB-C disk: Cumbersome to selectively restore from, the UI can be clunky, but it has saved my ass in some tight situations.
• All files stored on iCloud Drive: No history. Files may be lost during buggy betas like Catalina’s. Deleted files can usually be restored from the web UI.
• Private GitHub repositories for anything that involves text (code, notes): May get unexpectedly removed by Microsoft at their whim, e.g. for making statements against China.
• Manual copies of entire user home folders to different external disks: Hard to do incremental backups.
I use Resilio[1] to sync my laptop, phone (on an SDCard) and Scaleway VPS, this works really great because i have my files at all times on 3 systems and there is a very low chance they will all fail at the same time. My photos get uploaded instantly from the phone and I can then sort them from the laptop.
And then I use Cloudberry to backup to BackBlaze B2 to make sure that if anything goes wrong with my files and it gets synced across the system I can still recover them.
The whole setup costs me probably less than 3€ a month(2.49 for the VPS and a handful of cents for the B2) and gives me the same functionality I was getting from just using Dropbox for 12€.
I can also throw a few more services on the VPS to enhance file functionality at no cost, which I would not be able to do any other way.
[1] https://www.resilio.com/
BackBlaze is 0.005/GB. I have around something like 20GB of photos and the rest is documents which will take maybe 1 more GB so it's really not that expensive.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21199725
The subset of my data that's eminently relevant for my business is also stored and backed up on cloud storage (Google Drive and GitHub).
My notes are stored at Evernote, with the occasional local backup.
So far, this setup has proven to be very reliable for me.
All machines write their backup archives to the NAS.
I haven't tested a full restore, but I do scrub ZFS on the drives.
https://www.raidsonic.de/products/external_cases/soho_raid/i...
I have one at home and another in work (both encrypted)
My laptop also has an encrypted, snapshot cloud backup to Backblaze B2 storage using Arq Backup:
https://www.arqbackup.com/
I use Resilio Sync to sync my documents folder between my laptop and a Synology NAS (with RAID). My NAS also downloads periodic backups of AWS S3, email, Github etc.
This NAS is backed up locally to a standard external drive as well as Synology's own cloud backup service "C2" using Hyper Backup
https://c2.synology.com/en-global
Although this seems extreme, I've actually had to make use of all the services at one point or another.
This is a great setup because I get notified of failed backups and the data is compressed, encrypted and deduplicated before upload. So it's quite fast and efficient. I can also run it in append-only mode, so old backups are safe.
Since I'm involved with both projects, BorgBase and Vorta, please don't take my word for it and test it yourself ;-)
1: https://www.borgbase.com
2: https://vorta.borgbase.com
3: https://github.com/witten/borgmatic
4: https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
Pros:
Client side encryption + versioning + delta backups + undelete (due to versioning) + CPU efficient (never went above 5% CPU utilization) + ransomware protection + cost efficiency (thanks to Wasabi).
Details:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ce1cbg/beginne...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Arqbackup/comments/ce0bzf/testing_a...
But also Windows 10 backup pointing to a VMDK on the C: drive for recovering from blunders.
Oh, and tarsnap for the really important stuff.