Network Accessible Hard Drive

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Wed, 2023-04-26 at 17:21 +1000, Karl Auer wrote:
> Also very important. If each backup overwrites the previous backup, and
> you for whatever reason back up bad data, you then have no backup.
> 
> Network accessible storage for backups is way better than directly
> attached storage, unless you have multiple drives and cycle through
> them. Any attached storage is vulnerable to whatever might attack the
> machine it is connected to, from voltage surges to ransomware.

Hi,

the kind of backup procedures also depends much on the amount of data.

I make backups by rotation of external USB3->SATA3 HDDs using "cp -ai",
"cp -Tai", "tar --xattrs -czf". When the backups are finished I try to
make integrity checks of the backups. Those are tricky due to caches.

The good: Easy to use commands, that are not prone to user errors.
          Several backups on different drives.

The bad:  To backup the most important data (including Linux installs,
          IOW kernel, programs etc.), not all data, not all installs, a
          backup of my old desktop PC already takes more than 24 hours.
          During this time it quasi can't be used.

To sync data is probably less time consuming, but to my taste it's prone
to user errors. A server is also more complicated, than attaching an
USB3 drive. OTOH the "smart" firmware of many USB enclosures are a PITA.
In my experiences it's not easy to find an enclosure with reliable
firmware.

Regards,
Ralf