[ale] Personal Backup Strategies?

[David Tomaschik]

Pat,

Thanks for the feedback.  Some comments/questions below:

Pat Regan wrote:
> On 02/03/2010 11:19 AM, David Tomaschik wrote:
> > I've looked through some of the archives, but I was hoping to get a
> better
> > take on people's personal backup strategies. I have about 200GB of
> data that
> > needs to be protected.  This includes personal projects, academic work,
> > email archives, photos, home videos, and other data that cannot
> readily be
> > replaced.  Lately, however, this is growing at a rate of ~50GB/year, so
> > expansion is obviously an important point (thank you video cameras
> and 10MP
> > stills).  I am significantly less concerned about anything that can be
> > replaced (e.g., videos of talks at conferences that I have
> downloaded).  I
> > see 3 categories of predominant threat when it comes to backups, with
> > increasing levels of backup required to protect against them.
>
> It is pretty useful to actually break the data you back up into
> different groups.  Old videos, photos, and emails shouldn't be changing.
>  The old ones don't need to be handled nearly as often as your recent
> data.
This makes a lot of sense.  The vacation photos and videos and my music
collection sound like excellent cases for this category.  I just need to
script carefully to exclude these in the more frequent backups.
>
> You can just store your 200GB of old, non-changing data on <insert some
> type of media here> and ship copies off to a safe location.  I drop off
> off-site backups at my parents' house when I drive up to visit them.
> Multiple off-site backups are even better.
>
> That doesn't mean you can just dump 200 GB on an old hard drive and
> expect it to still be good a few years from now.  You'll want to check
> or replace the media on some sort of schedule.
>
> > 1) File system corruption/accidental deletion -- external backup drive
> > should be sufficient.
>
> I run my short term backups to various flash drives and my colocated
> server.  Backup to the server is automated.  I have a script I manually
> run that backs up to two of my flash drives.
I'm probably going to use something like Duplicity[1] (found from
rsync.net) to do this to my VPS daily.  It's hosted here in Atlanta, so
not super-remote, but should be plenty far for most situations.
<snip>
> I recently loaded Debian on my Android phone specifically to get rsync
> running.  I have a script on the phone to rsync those same short term
> backups to the microsd card in the phone.  I haven't gotten as far as
> getting something like cron running to automate this one, yet.  I very
> much like the idea of having a daily automated backup on a device that I
> have with me every single time I leave the house.  Especially since I
> won't have to think about it.
And your phone still works as a phone?  Haven't heard of putting Debian
on an Android.
> I also love the general durability of most flash media.  I've pulled
> data off of a CF card that went through the washer and dryer.  I can
> probably throw either of my flash drives, or even my phone (yikes!) out
> of this second story window (or probably higher) and still read the data.
That is useful to know, though I had generally assumed they were pretty
durable.
>
> > 2) Hard drive failure -- RAID 1?
>
> I hate down time.  All my personal desktop machines have had some form
> of RAID for about the last 10 years.
I need to get that going first.  Hopefully I can switch to RAID 1 with
only adding 1 disk.  Maybe a RAID 1 with 1 drive marked as failed, dd
the data over, and then bring the other drive in as a replacement.  I'll
have to stop and think about that some more.
> I have no trust in optical media.  I have tons of old backup CD and DVD
> discs that I just can't read anywhere.  They weren't scratched and
> weren't stored in a harsh environment.
>
> I've done rdiff-backup and rsync backups over slow DSL and cable links
> in the past.  As long as you can run the first backup locally you will
> do just fine.  Your estimate of 50GB per year is only an average of
> about 130 MB per day.  That's very doable over DSL and cable.
Is there a point at which I should be concerned about ISPs caring?  I
know they do for large P2P, but I'm not sure where the real threshold lies.

-- 
David Tomaschik, RHCE
Moderator, LinuxQuestions.org
http://www.tuxteam.com
david at tuxteam.com [GPG: 0x6D428695]


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