Help with a Backup strategy

Hi all.

Just started using restic for backups.

So i need advice with backup stragey for my local linux workstation (desktop)

Have a script that restic backups to NAS. (main backup repo of my pc)

How can i achieve the following backup locations to store my backups.

  1. Backblaze (remote) - backup two times a week or once a week (ideally do it from the server)
  2. /dev/sda1 (local drive, mounted to the computer) - backup/sync each boot
  3. /dev/sdb1 (local drive, mounted to the computer) - backup/sync each boot
  4. external hard drive - manually, every 3 months

Like i have two spare drives on my drive, why not use them for backup storage

Do i need to use restic copy or new restic repo or reclone or ........?

Also for maintance for the repo/s, i want to use my server power to prune, forget, check –read-data, like do the maintance on during night time, where the server will have access to nas mount via NFS.

Any recommedations for a backup stragery?

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New local repo:

mkdir repo && restic -r repo/ init

The strategy depends more on what risks you want to be save from than on what ressources you have available.

Generally you could run the same backup towards two different repos or run it once and then clone the repo to another location. The cloning spares your live system and only strains the backup drive.

If your local drives are the same size, you might make them a RAID 1 (mirror) and use that for the local backup and then rsync the repo to Backblaze. Running frequent or even scripted checks is always a good idea (check out –read-data and –read-data-subset). Add forgetting and pruning if you have limited space.

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thanks for the reply.

the both drives arent the same storage size

what will you recommend for this kind of scenerio

I was thinking about this

  • backblaze (remote) - should i clone via rclone or do new restic backup repo
  • /dev/sda1 (local drive) - do new restic backup repo
  • /dev/sdb1 (local drive) - clone from NAS
  • external hard drive - do new restic backup repo

Again, your strategy depends on what you want to achieve. If this was my home setup, I’d probably restic backup to /dev/sda1 (main backup), then clone that to backblaze (offsite backup) and from time to time clone it to an external hard drive (offline backup). If done right and monitored correctly, this would be a good 3-2-1 backup.

Thanks Nico,

One more quick question, with good mointoring and maintance of the repos, i should be fine? example doingcheck with –read-data after doing prune + forget before cloning to remote or local or offline.

That is how I do it here at home. IMO, depending on the amount of data and your hardware, there is no way of being 100% sure but it’s better than nothing. There are cases here in the forum where restic even caught bit flips on cheap hardware, e.g. on mine. Some people swear on zfs or btrfs to deal with that but one has to be careful because especially with zfs you should really know what you’re doing.

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is there any always to maintance/check restic repos other than check ?

None I’ve personally ever needed except that one time where my hard drive seems to have had a bit flip. There are a few threads in this forum about cases like that. A good place to start reading is here.

@adamol for scheduled backups on linux I would simply use cron. To run at each boot just add this line to your crontab:

@reboot full_path_to_your_restic_backup_script
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i prefer to backup before shutdown, like explained here

perfectly fine, just FYI - I gave a suggestion to your opening post here on top where you literally wrote “backup/sync each boot” at items 2 and 3.

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hahaha true, “realised after your comment” in my mind changed some approach, before shutdown will be be backup and each boot will be cloning repos