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What is your preferred method for backing up several TB of data?

What storage software could I run to have an archive of my personal files (a couple TB of photos) that doesn't require I keep a full local copy of all the data? I like the idea of a simple and focused tool like Syncthing, but they seem to be angling towards replication.

Is the simple choice to run some S3-like backend and use CLI or other client to append and browse files? I'd love something with fault tolerance that someone can gradually add disks to. If ceph were either less complicated or used less resources I'd want to do that.

zeluko , (edited )

So i understood you just want some local storage system with some fault tolerance.
ZFS will do that. Nothing fancy, just volumes as either blockdevice or ZFS filesystem.

If you want something more fancy, maybe even distributed, check out storage cluster systems with erasure coding, less storage wasted than with pure replication, though comes at reconstruction cost if something goes wrong.

MinIO comes to mind, tough i never used it.. my requirements seem to be so rare, these tools only get close :/
afaik you can add more disks and nodes more or less dynamically with it.

jkrtn OP ,

Yeah it's hard to find something that perfectly fits just what you want. I think it's better if I do something simple like ZFS and maybe some kind of file server on top.

DeltaTangoLima ,
@DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com avatar

I use rclone, with encryption, to S3. I have close to 3TB of personal data backed up to S3 this way - photos, videos, paperless-ngx (files and database).

Only readable if you have the passwords configured on my singular backup host (a RasPi), or stored in Bitwarden.

ironsoap ,

This alongside using Backblaze is what I would suggest assuming you are thinking online. Cheap and reliable, also relatively easy via a cron job.
https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/1260804565710-Quickstart-Guide-for-Rclone-and-B2-Cloud-Storage

DeltaTangoLima ,
@DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com avatar

Backblaze don't have a POP in my country, unfortunately.

nullPointer ,

tarsnap makes use of S3. does a decent deduplication job as well

lemmyvore ,

Borg Backup. It can work locally or over network. Takes snapshots of the files you give it. Performs deduplication, compression and optionally encryption. You can check the integrity of the backups and repair them. There's a very simple to use GUI for it called Pika Backup to get you started.

francisfordpoopola ,
@francisfordpoopola@lemmy.world avatar

Where will the target be? Online or local? Rsync is really easy to use and the target files are browse-able. I could be too dense but I find online buckets aren't easily browse-able. Even a homemade NAS might be a good choice and it's easily scalable.

manos_de_papel ,

I like restic, it'll do deduplication and compression, it can backup to s3 or ssh or locally.

Nomecks ,

Save your files to a local s3 object storage mount, enable versioning for immutability and use erasure coding for fault tolerance. You can use Lustre or some other S3 software for the mount. S3 is great for single user file access. You can also replicate to any cloud based S3 for offsite.

solrize ,

I use Borg Backup to a Hetzner storage box but doing the same thing to a disk array would work fine. How much data are you talking about? What is the usage picture? Backup and archiving are really not the same thing.

jkrtn OP ,

I was looking at Borg but that's one of the tools where it seems like I need the entire replicated copy of the dataset locally to add more. I believe Borg can open a view into previous versions of the data, so it's technically append only, but I'd find that process tedious.

These are a couple TB and mostly photos I've taken. I'd like to be able to browse and edit at some point, but my primary concern right now is keeping a copy of everything.

solrize ,

Yeah that's more of an archive than a backup scenario. I have a small self hosted Nextcloud that I use for stuff like that. For a few TB, you might consider Hetzner Storage Cloud which is really Nextcloud. It is backed up daily which is a help.

jkrtn OP ,

How was it setting up and running Nextcloud? I'm very curious about their office software, looks fun.

solrize ,

As I remember, setting it up was kind of a pain, but once runnnig it hasn't neded attention. I don't use the fancy apps. Also, by now there might be an apt package or docker container or something of that sort. I haven't used their fancy apps much. My main use of it is to upload photos from my phone so I can access them from other devices.

BearOfaTime ,

Syncthing can do send only. It's pretty configurable.

But I'd probably use a cloud storage like storj.io, and tools like duplicati.

YurkshireLad ,

Would this work? https://rclone.org/

jkrtn OP ,

That's top of my list for moving the files if I do an S3 or WebDAV backend. I'm overthinking this, aren't I? Just find a WebDAV server, set it up, use rclone to append files and pretty much everything else will be able to browse.

YurkshireLad ,

Haha it's easy to overthink things sometimes. I'm guilty of that. I'm using SFTPGo at home to serve files from a small server.

deegeese ,
@deegeese@sopuli.xyz avatar

Are we talking personal offsite backup, or a commercial cloud service?

For cloud backups I like BackBlaze but I’ve never tried to use it as a general cloud storage drive.

jkrtn OP ,

This would be self-hosted and local, one of the locations in a 3-2-1 strategy. BackBlaze would work for an offsite but I already have that portion covered.

deegeese ,
@deegeese@sopuli.xyz avatar

that doesn't require I keep a full local copy of all the data

So you want a local self hosted backup, but also not a full copy? So like backup only recently changed files?

jkrtn OP ,

I want like one local device to have a full copy, but the devices writing new data into that one do not need a full copy.

deegeese ,
@deegeese@sopuli.xyz avatar

I think you just described using a NAS as primary storage.

jkrtn OP ,

Do you have a software you like for that?

deegeese ,
@deegeese@sopuli.xyz avatar

It’s basically a RAID + File shares like SMB.

Loads of DIY options, but I use a Synology so I don’t need to mess with anything.

AtariDump ,

Open Media Vault

teawrecks ,

I've been using TrueNas with a nightly sync to Backblaze for years and I like it.

It used to be called FreeNas and used FreeBSD. Now the BSD version is called TrueNas Core, and a new Linux based version is called TrueNas Scale.

I would go with TrueNas Scale if I were starting a new one today. You probably won't use the "jail" functionality immediately, but they're super handy, and down the line if you start playing with them, you'll run into fewer compatibility issues running Linux vs BSD.

ironsoap ,

In technical terms you mean doing an incremental or differential back up to a local network storage location, correct?

jkrtn OP ,

"Incremental" sounds right. I want it to act like rsync without deleting files on the destination, so all the folders are merged. (It would be cool if it kept versions but I don't absolutely need that.) Tools like Borg or Restic look great, but I have been searching to see if they support this kind of usage and they seem not to.

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