Recommend Backup Solution For Data

General system Applications
21

A very overlooked piece of backup software - it has a learning curve - but when you are up and running - there is nothing better - don’t be fooled by the lack of activity

I used it for keeping backups on windows servers - it was one of the only alternatives to high priced proprietary solutions for backing up locked files using VSS.

And because it’s JAVA it can run on your toaster - metaphorically speaking.

22

In addition to vorta you can put a little bit of automatic into borg by using borgmatic.

4 Likes
23

+1 for borgmatic. Makes the management of borg backups trivial.

2 Likes
24

Not necessarily a solution recommendation, but a consideration to think through…

If you are looking at backing up data that is truly important, also consider that multiple backups on different drives, NAS and other PCs all at the same location can all be wiped out by the same similar disaster (it sucks, but it’s always possible that house or apartment building can burn to the ground). You may want to think about adding an offsite copy of data (ie. rotating removable drives and putting the latest copy in a bank deposit box, or using any of a number of cloud services to store data, etc).

You’ll need to decide for yourself how much you want to be bulletproof and how much you are willing to invest for being able to recover from different levels of disasters or data loss.

5 Likes
25

Researching more, I think, to the list of the things I’d like in backup application I’ll add:

  • Versioning, so that it possible to restore versions of files from different times
  • That it keeps filesystem metadata, such as permissions. I’m not sure, but it might be important if you when you restore or migrate dotfiles?

I decided to use Vorta for now. And already used it to make a backup to an external hard drive. It checks everything except that it doesn’t store files in plain, and so you can’t browse backups without Vorta. But it is simple to use. Plus Borg/Vorta is the most recommended here.

For someone who wants files to be stored in plain, and to have most other things I listed, except GUI, there are rdiff-backup and rsnapshot. Although I didn’t try to use them, they seems to meet all my criteria. But since they’re CLI, I feel lazy to learn their commands.

3 Likes