Ask HN: I need a better backup solution | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I need a better backup solution

1 pointpavel_lishin7 comments

Currently, most of my stuff is backed up via Crashplan, and semi-duplicated between my work laptop and home desktop. But this doesn't really work very well for me, because Crashplan is of the opinion that each computer is a distinct entity and the files on them don't overlap. Dropbox seems to have a better approach that suits my needs, but I don't trust them and don't want to support them.

As a specific example of what I need, I have: Digital Photos: 45 gig Scanned Photos: 15 gig Documents: 9 gig Random images: 2 gig Porn: 5 gig Misc: 50 gig

I'd like to keep my documents and random images on my work laptop, and have the changes I make there synced up with everything else - if I update my resume, and then throw my work laptop into the river, I'd like to come home and boot up my desktop and have access to those recent changes. I don't want the 60 gigs of photos cluttering up the work laptop, but on occasion I'd like to be able to go through a few of those folders at work to find a specific photo - without having to sync the whole 60 gigabytes down. (Which is what Crashplan would require.)

Ideally, I'd have a server running something like OwnCloud.org, but I'm not sure if I want to pay out of pocket for a few hundred gigs of storage; plus, I'd have to sysadmin the whole thing, keep it secure, distribute it so that there's no single point of failure, etc.

What works for you, and what would you suggest as a solution for me?

> pay out of pocket for a few hundred gigs of storage

2T Seagate Barracuda on Newegg right now: 89.99

2x2T (redundancy) would then be 179.98. An out of pocket expense, yes, but not terrible. Your cable tv bill (if you can cable) likely equals that in 1.5-2 months. Plus, until a drive fails, this is a one time, single out of pocket expense. If you are paying crashplan 9.99/month, then after 18 months you are "out of pocket" enough to have bought a pair of drives.

2T would be sufficient to backup what you list above with ample room for growth at the moment. And it is yours... You can do whatever you want with it, with no restrictions as to what some company wants you to do.

> What works for you, and what would you suggest as a solution for me?

Three 2T WD red's, in a Linux md raid5 config, with rsnapshot as the backup tool.

About 2 months ago, a laptop I'd put BTRFS on had the filesystem corrupt beyond recovery. Dump, reinstall Linux, rsync back over the backup data from the local backup server (the 2T WD's in Linux md raid5) and the machine was back up and running again as if nothing had ever happened to it.

I use Google Drive to back up my stuff, makes it accessible on my phone, other computers and through a web interface on any internet connected device. I however don't have the data collection that you do.

You're the second person to recommend Google Drive; I'll look into it.

Have you looked into rsync?

Rsync is more for a general file back up system. It works slightly like git where it saves incremental updates of your computer instead of a full file system snap shot every back up.

Rsync is great for transferring files, but not so great for intelligently figuring out what was actually deleted, what was updated, etc. As an example, if I only download a portion of my photos, and then try to save the changes with rsync using the --delete option (because, hey, if I delete old_resume.doc from $HERE, why should it stick around $THERE?) - whoops, all the OTHER photos are now gone, too.

Plus, I'd have to run it by hand. Plus, while I'd run it to sync $WORK_LAPTOP with $SOME_SERVER, that doesn't automatically propagate it to $SOME_OTHER_SERVER, or $HOME_DESKTOP, etc.

I can recommend bup. https://github.com/bup/bup

However, i don't have nearly as much data as you have. I only back up around 20G regularly, as i am quickly hitting the performance limits of the Raspberry Pi i am backing up to.

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