I don’t mean system files, but your personal and work files. I have been using Mint for a few years, I use Timeshift for system backups, but archived my personal files by hand. This got me curious to see what other people use. When you daily drive Linux what are your preferred tools to keep backups? I have thousands of pictures, family movies, documents, personal PDFs, etc. that I don’t want to lose. Some are cloud backed but rather haphazardly. I would like to use a more systematic approach and use a tool that is user friendly and easy to setup and program.
+1 rsync, to an external harddrive. Superfast. Useful also in case I need a backup of a single file that I changed or deleted by mistake. Work files are also backed up to the cloud on mega.nz, which is very useful also for cross-computer sync. But I don’t trust personal files to the cloud.
I am using Borg for years. So far, the tool has not let me down. I store the backups on external hard drives that are only used for backups. In addition, I save really important data at rsync.net and at Hetzer in a storage box. Which is not a problem because Borg automatically encrypts locally and for decryption in my case you need a password and a key file.
Generally speaking, you should always test whether you can restore data from a backup. No matter which tool you use. Only then you have a real backup. And an up-to-date backup should always additionally be stored off-site (cloud, at a friend’s or relative’s house, etc.). Because if the house burns down, the external hard drive with the backups next to the computer is not much use.
By the way, I would advise against using just rsync because, as the name suggests, rsync only synchronizes, so you don’t have multiple versions of a file. Which can be useful if you only notice later that a file has become defective at some point.
External harddrive, drag&drop.
Duplicacy
KDE user so for my personal files I backup with both Kups and Bups (install both) and you get the choice of cloning type or only changed files with going back in time choices. Integrates into KDE taskbar/system settings.
For redundancy, I back up my main sync folder on the desktop to my laptop using Syncthing over my WiFi/network.
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I do this as well. Easy and inexpensive.
Rsync
Borg backup (via Pika Backup (Libadwaita gnome app) frontend) to one of my physical drive and also to borgbase.com (free tier 10 gb free)
Kopia repo on a separate disk dedicated to backups. Have Kopia on my servers as well sending to my local s3 gateway and second copy to wasabi.
My local backups are handled by rdiff-backup to a mirror set of disks. That means my data is versioned but easily accessible for immediate restore, and now on three disks (my SSD, and two rotating rust drives). It also makes restores as simple as copying a file if I want the latest version, or an easy command if I want an older version. And testing backups is as easy as a diff command to compare the backup version with the live version.
Having your files just be files in your backup solution is very handy. At work I don’t mind having to use an application like Veeam, because I’m being paid to do that. At home I want to see my backups quickly and easily, because I’d rather be working on my files than wrestling with backup software…
Remote backups are handled by SpiderOak, who have been fine for me for almost a decade. I also use them to synchronise my desktop and laptop computer. On my desktop SpiderOak also backs up some files in an archive area on the rotating rust mirror set - stuff that’s large and I don’t access often, so don’t need to put on my laptop but do want backed up.
I also have a USB thumbdrive that’s encrypted and used when I’m travelling to back up changes on my laptop via a simple rsync copy - just in case I have limited internet access and SpiderOak can’t do its thing…
I did also have a NAS in the mix once, but I realised that it was a waste of energy - both mine and electricity. In normal circumstances my data is on 5 locations (desktop SSD, laptop SSD, desktop mirror set, SpiderOak’s storage) and in the very worst case it’s in two locations (laptop SSD, USB thumbdrive). Rdiff-backup to the NAS was simply overkill once I’d added the local mirror set into my desktop, so I retired it.
I’d added the local mirror set because I was working with large files - data sets and VM images - and backups over the network to the NAS were taking an age. A local set of cheap disks in my desktop tower was faster and yet still fairly cheap.
Here’s my advice for your consideration:
- Simple is better than complicated.
- How you restore is more important than how you backup; perform test restores regularly.
- Performance matters; backups that take ages are backups you won’t run.
- Look to meet the 3-2-1 criteria; 3 copies, on 2 different storage systems, with at least 1 in a different geographic location. Cloud storage helps with this.
Good luck with your backup strategy!
I use dirvish a text based cron enabled rsync front end. Read dirvish.org for details about it.
I use this to clone and hold time based backups to external disks which I can verify or use offsite.
Rock solid for years.
I do 2 backups
Veeam system image daily; this is a fully bootable image of every drive on my system, kept for things like hardware failure or “oops” moments. It just goes to my NAS for fast local storage.
Online backup of important files daily; this has changed a few times, I was using Restic to B2, then Duplicati to Wasabi S3, now I’m using iDrive to see how that is.
My favorite tools are definitely Veeam and Duplicati, because they both have a good UI and are easy to use, both automatically run in the background and handle scheduling entirely on their own. Browsing snapshots is easy and finding the files you want at a specific date/time is quick.
Restic and Kopia I’ve used as well, they’re much harder to use especially for restores, finding files is a nightmare via CLI. Scheduling is a pretty involved step, and you have to figure out how to run them in the background yourself. Both also performed really slowly for me on my ~3TB backup set of about 50k files, compared to Veeam and Duplicati which are very fast.
+1 for Veeam. I am a backup administrator and this is our tool of choice. I use it for my home machines as well and it works great.
Just remember, you don’t have a backup unless you have tested it.
I’ve found Restic great once dialed in. I have a systemd service run backups automatically. Super fast thanks to only backing up diffs; only the initial backup is slow.
Yes making a script and service isn’t for everyone.
Finding files in the backup is easy… you just mount the backup and search any way you want, just like any other directory. Not sure why that’s hard?
I’ve found restores really slow mostly, initial backups are slow but not too bad.
As far as mounting the backup and searching it, mostly it’s just a lot of steps to remember.
Ah. I also made another script where I type loadbackup in bash and everything is just there. I guess I’ve just made it easier for myself lol.
I also load Restic variables in bash so I’m not typing out paths etc. Password is kept in gnome keyring and is requested automatically.
I forget the annoying steps cause I’ve had this for awhile.
Restic. Borg also great.
I’ve used a combination of
- Managing ZFS snapshots with pyznap
- Plain old rsync to copy important files that happen not to be on ZFS filesystems to ZFS.
If I were doing this over today, I’d probably consider https://zrepl.github.io/ instead of pyznap, as pyznap is no longer receiving real active development.
In the past I’ve used rdiff-backup, which is great but it’s hard to beat copy-on-write snapshots for speed and being lightweight.
Simply rsync in a crontab.
