Friendly reminder to have an automated backup for all your devices.
Lots of threads lately about people losing their precious files. So, what are you guyses methods, setups and tips for backing up? What software do you recommend? Any OS is welcome!
My setup is a NAS drive on my network that my Mac backs up to automatically (and encrypted) using Time Machine. I also have an off site version of this same setup but on a different network where I regularly visit.
Currently I'm looking for some decent (and hopefully FOSS) backup solution to use these same network storage locations but on Windows 10. The built-in File History feature doesn't support multiple locations out of the getgo, nor full disk backups either. I also checked out Duplicati but that's still in beta and has it's issues, like not being able to backup system and appdata files. It also screams at me when I'm not connected to the network where the other drive is when I'm not there. Any suggestions?
I would like it had a "cherry pick" as the TimeMachine have.
Joshua Sanchez
Using acronis for years, flawless shit and it saved my ass so many times
Isaiah Powell
I have an rsync script that copies things over to another machine. I keep another copy of some of the more important stuff on an external hard drive, which is unplugged when not in use. Okay, not off-site or anything, but it will save me from lightning. Maybe I could leave it at my mom's house. If a tornado or a nuke or something destroys both of our houses then I probably have bigger problems.
>for all your devices. I solve this by not having anything I care about saving on my phone or my laptop. Anything I do care about saving I put on my main file server.
>not being able to backup system and appdata files I just keep everything I care about keeping in a directory I control. The OS is disposable, as are installed applications, if the boot drive bites it then I get another one and reinstall, I have a file where I noted down the customizations I made. It would be inconvenient but I wouldn't lose anything. Maybe doing this is easier for me on Linux than it would be for you, idk.
Xavier Thompson
This. I do my backups manually by forcefully removing the header of a HDD and drawing random patterns over the neodymium plates.
Luis Cooper
Same strategy
Question though, your file server runs what?
I basically have a headless Ubuntu distro and I can ssh into it to mount my encrypted Data/Backup drives and then access Data from any other device
The main issues with this is the slower speeds because files go through sftp and I can't see file previews.
Is this the best solution?
Charles Morgan
Debian stable. It's not a separate machine, it's my main desktop and I installed Samba on it. I guess I could switch to NFS or sshfs since I don't really need windows compatibility anymore but eh, that seems like work.
you might try samba or sshfs since those will show up as a filesystem mount. I don't use previews or thumbnails but if you do that should enable them to work. possibly slowly, depending on your network. I've never had ssh/sftp be a bottleneck, its always been my laptop's ancient wireless-n card, though. AES-GCM will be the fastest SSH cipher for anything with AES-NI, for things that don't you want ChaCha20.
Aiden Harris
I have an external hard drive equivalent to the size of my download folder and I back up every few months. I also have a 1tb HD I use for backing up important shit like my pictures and media I want, so my media files are backed up and my pics are backed up twice.
Jacob Ross
>that seems like work.
I'm running Ubuntu, all you need to do is
sudo apt-get install openssh-server
then from any device with sftp capability, you connect to it, there's nothing fancy needed, Files does it without issues on Ubuntu
LibreElec can also see the files with sftp, so that's great as an HTPC, while keeping files encrypted
Just sayin- sftp also shows as filesystem mount
Isaiah Butler
Looks like a great tool, I'll check it out for my gnu/linux installs. Would be awesome if there was a windows alternative for it that does similar stuff, since I want to back up my surface pro.
If you actually read the OP, then you'd know my macshit is doing fine, and it's winshit that is having trouble.
Yeah I was eyeballing acronis true image for a bit, but I haven't found a tutorial on how I could set it up for my situation. And I thought the consensus was to never pay for backup software since it's a form of being held hostage in case things go wrong and the company gets greedy?
Daniel Hernandez
I went from SyncToy to Acronis, to finally settling down for a GFS cycle on Macrium Reflect.
Now I just need to somehow build a cheap 80+TB capable NAS for another set of backups.
Ayden Allen
I have several hundred gigs worth of downloads and stuff stored in an old 1TB WD external hard drive without any backups. The hard drive is connected to my router which is seeding 24/7. How fucked am I? How should I go about backing up my files?
Ayden Walker
>external hdd >wd asking for it/10
John Reyes
Not him but they are actually not that bad, I have two 2TB ones running 24/7 for over 4 years now and they still work flawlessly. They are pretty quiet which is what I like about them.
Jaxson Morgan
I use FreeFileSync and it's two way sync with versioning for file changes. It maintains a copy of my entire OS to a external drive. Good for reinstalling Windows or reverting files to a old copy if needed.
Carter Reed
You can start out by buying extra drives for periodic offline backups.
Brody Robinson
I keep seeing screenshots of dark macOS. Is that even available right now?
Aiden Harris
Maybe my files are not that precious
Brayden Bell
Public beta is now available for everyone. Make sure you have backups, because things can break or just not work!
Christian Nelson
Btrfs snapshots and Kup for /home
Liam Lewis
knows his shit
Austin Harris
I just copy and paste everything to another hard drive every week or two.
Sounds very annoying and impractical, animu user. Computers are designed to make the lives of us easier, not to give us more work. Ontop of that that just sounds like it would be very unorganized at one point, what if you want to keep multiple versions of a file? You can't!
Jason Sullivan
>plug in drive >open file manager >create folder with current date >ctrl+a, ctrl+c, ctrl+v >wait >unplug drive Not hard.
That takes up a lot of room and time. Not efficient at all. Let alone, file permissions and such will get lost.
Jaxon Gonzalez
>That takes up a lot of room Well it doesn't fill the space on the drives so I don't care, and I only keep 3 versions total. >time No it doesn't. >Not efficient at all Elaborate. Its literally copy and paste. Plugging in the drive etc. takes like 20 more tops. >file permissions and such will get lost Why the hell would I care about file permissions of video, images and config files?
Christian Foster
>20 more seconds
Jaxon Hernandez
>>takes a lot of room >no yes it does, you're literally copying the full contents over and over, if your data on your drive is 200GB, and you keep three versions of it (which is not a lot at all, especially not if you only update some of those files, and haven't, in a while) >>time >no yes it does, again, you're copying the full contents, clever backup solutions compare what's already backed up and just copy over changes while keeping older versions of the changed files >copy and paste being efficient see above >not caring about file permissions on just videos and images not everyone just saves videos and images, granted your method would be good enough for this average normie stuff, but most of us, well, at least me, want full disk backups in case anything goes wrong with projects, systems + setups, etc.
Joseph Baker
>yes it does, you're literally copying the full contents over and over... >clever backup solutions compare what's already backed up and just copy over changes while keeping older versions of the changed files... I could do that if I wanted, but that's not how I like my backups. I prefer to have a copy of everything from a specific time period and space is a non-issue for me.
>want full disk backups in case anything goes wrong with projects, systems + setups, etc. I'm on Windows, so that is literally a non-issue. I can have it installed and up and running exactly how it was before within 45 minutes as it just werks for me and I keep a text file that goes over the settings that I've changed from the defaults.
Isaiah Martinez
I don't care if I lose everything so I don't backup anything.
Parker Foster
I need to either buy or build a NAS that doubles as a media server.