So I’m not really a selfhoster per say - but I run 2 NAS at home and I am working my way toward it. I don’t really need my stuff open to the internet so I just use it on my LAN.

However I do have a lot of data, and I’m constantly backing things up. My question is - I have the following setup:

  1. Computer hard drives
  2. These backup to my NAS
  3. I have a separate HDD in an enclosure I plug into the NAS directly and copy my data onto every few months to put in my safe.
  4. Some cloud storage for very important smaller stuff (pictures)

My main question is - what is the best way to copy off new data from my NAS (Synology) to my “cold storage” drive, without recopying everything every time? is there a way to detect the files that exist on both and only copy new ones? I’ve always had this question when doing backups and it seems to always be overly complex.

You guys are very knowledgeable so I’m sure someone has dealt with this!

  • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    1·
    1 day ago

    What are you trying to guard against with backups? It sounds like your greatest concern is data loss from hardware failure.

    The 3-2-1 approach exists because it addresses the different concerns about data loss: hardware failures, accidental deletion, physical disaster.

    That drive in your safe isn’t a good backup - drives fail just as often when offline as online (I believe they fail more often when powered off, but I don’t have data to support that). That safe isn’t waterproof, and it’s fire resistance is designed to protect paper, not hard drives.

    If this data is important enough to back up, then it’s worth having an off site copy of your backup. Backblaze is one way, but there are a number of cloud based storages that will work (Hetznet, etc).

    As to your Windows/Linux concern, just have a consistent data storage location, treat that location as authoritative, and perform backups from there. For example - I have a server, a NAS, and an always-on external drive as part of my data duplication. The server is authoritative, laptops and phones continuously sync to it via Syncthing or Resilio Sync, and it duplicates to the NAS and external drives on a schedule. I never touch the NAS or external drives. The server also has a cloud backup.