Back up your backups
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2025
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The 6-5-4-3-2-1 method
I'm doing a 5-4-3-2-1 method. 5 backups. 4 on-site. 3 attached to one machine, 2 of those are on separate external usb drives synced at different intervals. 1 in the shed.
The shed as an of site backup is a good idea.
We live in the shed (it is really its own entire stone building) during our full house renovation, so I have already run electrical and cat6a to the shed and have an old router in AP mode there.
Hooking up one of those NAS boards or a 2nd hand old PC there would be a good backup option.
Sheesh. Better setup a secondary destination for my customers just in case.
3-2-1 rule also applies with external providers
Just a reminder that a cloud provider can oopsie delete your data
The customer was fucking lucky they had their data also in AWS. many companies don't do multi cloud backups.
i wonder what trustworthy european provider to use anyway (that has similarly good pricing)
Personally I use Hetzner Storage Box
Same. It's pretty cheap, comes with unlimited free traffic and is just simple to use. Supports many ways to access it, including BorgBackup.
Can I (figuratively speaking) just change the destination in my backup scripts and start writing to Hetzner... or are they using a completely different setup?
Certainly has me concerned. I'll have to investigate a bit more into the financial solvency of the company to better understand whether they are at least covering bills and such... but honestly sounds like they aren't and haven't been.
Going to need to start looking for alternative S3 type storage.
Yeah, personally I'm optimistic, but I'd be in a boat of expecting access to be shut off one day, and ready to start uploading to a new provider at any moment
I'm only concerned insofar as I don't know of a good alternative, and really don't want to spend the time shifting everything to a new system. I have 3 VPSes and 4(? 5?) home computers backing up to B2. The major ones, I have also backing up to disk, so really the risk for me is in that gap period while I find and set up on a new backup service.
This will be beyond annoying, but for me not catastrophic. Mainly, I've liked B2 - the price, and how easy it's been to use. I understand the UI; it's pretty straightforward, and it's directly supported by a lot of software. It would be a real shame if it went under due to mismanagement.
Also: another example supporting my theory that one of the major flaws in Capitalism is public trading markets. This shit wasn't an issue before they went public.
Realistically you shouldn't depend on a single place for backups
Remember 3-2-1. Three places, two mediums and one offsite
Time to set up other backups