Does anyone have any recommendations for good backup software? My use case is pretty simple. I have an external usb drive I want to backup to every so often. Both the source and backup drives are 8TB capacity (I’m not even close to using the full capacity yet)

Normally the backup drive is left unplugged but I want to be able to plug it in run the backup software to copy across anything new then unplug it again for storage.

Simple file backup (not looking to do a full bootable OS drive backup or anything)

Thank you

  •  Onihikage   ( @Onihikage@beehaw.org ) English
    6•11 months ago

    FreeFileSync is FOSS and works pretty well for me. It can be set up for automated sync on a schedule or you can just manually sync files between two destinations. I haven’t really tinkered with the automated stuff but if what you want is to open up a program and hit a button to sync, it can definitely do that.

  •  vinotempo   ( @vinotempo@beehaw.org ) English
    6•11 months ago

    Hey, I’d recommend taking a look at Syncthing. It’s software that runs locally, and you can configure the synchronisation to occur in a unidirectional flow instead of bidirectional. I.e. configure it to only synchronise data from the source drive to the backup drive.

    Hope this helps and all the best!

    EDIT: As pointed out, Syncthing is more suited to syncing data between two or more devices so may not be the right solution for OPs use case.

  •  Haui   ( @Haui@discuss.tchncs.de ) English
    6•11 months ago

    The question really is what data you‘re trying to back up.

    Would you be annoyed, sad, very sad or potentially ruined if that data goes away?

    Depending on your threat level, you should choose one that strikes the balance between cost and reliability.

    If you don’t have tons of data and it’s not insanely important data, use something free to encrypt/stripe it over free google/dropbox/onedrive accounts.

    If it is insanely important data, you can try tarsnap. I just heard of it but stripe uses it for their credit card data.

    I personally use idrive. Has worked well so far but is paid as well and I didnt have to restore yet.

    Good luck.

    •  Schedar   ( @Schedar@beehaw.org ) OPEnglish
      2•11 months ago

      Just to answer your question:

      It’s quite a lot of data but not insanely important, it would be really inconvenient if I lost it but far from the end of the world. I’m looking at local backup because in the event of an entire hardware drive failure having to download all the data again over the internet would take an absolute age. Not that a cloud backup isn’t also good (I am using backblaze) in case the local backup drive also failed at the same time.

      I do however have other things that are really important which I already backup with multiple levels of cloud and local storage (such as family photos, secure documents etc) - I will check out tarsnap as well though as it sounds interesting Thank you

      •  Haui   ( @Haui@discuss.tchncs.de ) English
        2•11 months ago

        Thanks for clarifying! It sounds like you are fairly experienced already. I‘m pretty certain you will figure out the right solution for yourself.

        To expand a little on my setup and backup philosopy: basically 3-2-1 backup strategy, 3 copies, 2 types of media, 1 off site

        1. I run my bulk storage on two wd red 8 tb in raid 1 (2 copies)
        2. I backup the documents, personal photos and videos on an encrypted iDrive storage (3rd copy, 2 types of media, 1 off site)
        3. I also have my dvds ripped on my drives but they are „backed up“ physically in the basement

        The only thing I still need go take care of is backing up my system itself which is still elusive to me.

        In case you need cheap bulk backup storage. I chose iDrive because it is very cheap per TB compared to other cloud storage providers and you can encrypt everything (you could also encrypt locally and copy it somewhere but thats out of my scope rn)

        Have a good one! :)

  •  Dandroid   ( @dandroid@dandroid.app ) 
    4•11 months ago

    I recently set up rsnapshot. You set the backup cadence as a cron job. And then every time it runs, it hard links all the files that haven’t changed, then rsyncs all the files that have changed. So you could go back to three days ago if you set it up that way. Or last month. Or whatever works for your use case.

    The catch is that it has to pull the files rather than push, so if you have a Synology or something with a smaller OS, it may not support rsnapshot. For my Synology, I had to create a docker container for it to work, since there was no way to install it directly on the host OS.

  •  Haatveit   ( @Haatveit@beehaw.org ) English
    4•11 months ago

    Bvckup (not a typo)

    Made by a little Swiss company, extremely light but very competent. Stays completely out of your way unless it absolutely must get your attention (which is usually never).

    I think it’s paid only but it’s very reasonable. Works great in intermittent situations, I. E. It won’t blow up if it tries to run a scheduled backup and the source or target is disconnected etc… Works very well for me for a decade.

  •  unreliable   ( @unreliable@discuss.tchncs.de ) 
    3•11 months ago

    I am very happy using duply, that uses duplicity. Works well both for mounted disks or S3.

    I would ignore any recommendations of a sync tool like Dropbox. They will very happy propagate your problem in all your places before you realized it.

  •  pnutzh4x0r   ( @pnutzh4x0r@lemmy.ndlug.org ) English
    3•11 months ago

    I have a similar setup (external USB drive that I periodically plugin to backup stuff), and I use rsnapshot which is based on the venerable rsync utility. It is a command line solution that I’ve used for many years and it allows you to do daily, weekly, or even monthly backups.

    I also use rsnapshot for handling remote backups as well, so it is pretty versatile.