How To Backup Your Computer - Tips and Tricks

[@TheLinuxCast]

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[@yomboprime]

I use GRSync, very easy. It maintains a list of different backup configs that you can select in a drop-down list (as if they were different scripts). I also use the 'exclude' list.

[@thingsiplay]

I can tell you, people learn from mistakes best. Most people won't do "proper" and "regularly" backups until they experience data loss. I sure am count myself to those people. Some even say I am obsessed with backups and I still think it is not enough.

[@CyperN077]

People SHOULD LEARN! but they don't always do it. Sadly I do more backups than work.

[@ArniesTech]

Yepp. Learning through pain so to speak 🙏

[@richardmonroe4208]

Purchasing pcloud at the time I did was one of my savvy computer investments (lifetime license). Not only do I use it for backup but it is a way to access files on any device I happen to be using. Sharing a file with someone is a cinch.

[@TheLinuxCast]

Yeah I'm waiting for a good deal to do that.

[@gregcampwriter]

As a writer, I have been obsessed with backups. I have my work stored on flash drives, in cloud storage, and on a second computer. And Linux Mint makes weekly backup easy. The good news for me is that my files that cannot be replaced are small enough that I'm nowhere near to the free storage limit on my cloud account. Everything else, I can download again from the software repository.

[@ArniesTech]

Cant be too safe, when it comes to critical Data 💪😎

[@MichaelDeBusk]

I've advised people to make a deal with a friend or family member. Set up a backup of your computer on a computer at their house and do the same for them at your place. Free except for the cost of a good-sized hard drive.

[@VictoriaMan69]

Timeshift works great with btrfs and is almost instant. I then take my virtual hard disk and related files and copy that to my storage drive as needed to have long term backups.

[@rodsands7646]

LuckyBackup is a good GUI for rsync, would make a good GUI comparison inclusion to any video on rsync Also, I keep all my important and critical files backed up to a 128GB tiny (size of thumbnail, the SanDisk Ultra Fit CZ430 come in up to 512GB) Sandisk USB flash drive, which I keep attached to my keys. The backups are contained within an encrypted persistent live snapshot of my MX Linux system. If the worst happens (eg house burns down) I can plug in the flash drive and immediately restore to a new PC or temporarily use from live USB. Also, do not omit to back up Chrome/Firefox bookmarks, they would be basically impossible to recreate, after accumulating over several years. I have yet to investigate BTRFS, so looking forward to your video.

[@BytebroUK]

All I can do is add my own experience/strategy. All the big stuff like movies, vids, pics, and so on (along with the docs and so on) get synced to the cloud, in my my case Onedrive, using 'insynch' on Ubuntu. I'ts a 'paid for' but I can live with that. The kinda stuff that's more important in my ~/$HOME gets cloned using (in my case) using DejaDupe, to sync my /home to a local SSD. That is likely to be available on most *buntu distros, I think. Seems to do deltas rather than full backups, so will likely take less space and time. Word to the wise here, I did several times distro-hop, and on one of them then did a backup, and inadvertently wiped my local SSD backup drive, purely because I hit the wrong choice in the drop-down. Children, do not distro-hop or reformat backup drives, after adult refreshment - that will be unlikely to go well!

[@code8986]

I've heard good things about Pika Backup. For CLI options, there are restic, borg, and duplicati. Rclone is also a great complement to rsync, for targets that rsync doesn't support.

[@captain_ironbutt]

I run incremental backups from my fedora machine to my NAS using Déjà Vu, and my NAS is incrementally backed up to BackBlaze. I only pay $2-3 a month of S3 cloud storage.

[@crazycatman4171]

The program "Back In Time" is also a very good solution for (automated) backups. It provides both a command line tool and a graphical user interface. It is made by bít-team, uses rsync and cp and is under GNU GPLv2.

[@Miguel_GM]

11:50 You can exclude things this way (I think it's more neat): --exclude={"item1","item2","item_x"}

[@fubaralakbar6800]

Two external hard drives, each of which get my entire home folder, usually about 40 to 50 GB. I keep two copies in case the computer and/or drive crashes during backup/restoration.

[@carltaylor4942]

Thank you very much for a very informative and extremely practical video. I've just recently discovered your channel and I'm watching all of your videos. Just subscribed, too! I was just talking to a friend today who lost all her photos from last year by dropping a hard drive on the floor. No backup! Been there myself, too, and it's no fun. Thanks again! 😀 Love the detailed breakdown of the rsync script!

[@zoltan1953]

I would love a dedicated video for rsync. It's something that I've wanted to use, but I've had a hard time figuring out how to use it because there are so many options, and I don't know which options I should use, which options I don't need to use, and largely I don't even know what options exist, so I don't know what options to look for. Grsync also confused me, so I never use it. I just use Timeshift because it's simple, straight forward, and it holds my hand like a noob because I'm...well...I'm a fuckin noob. 🤷‍♂ Btw, I use Arch.

[@wartlme]

I am planning on setting up a backup server on a farm that is 60 miles from my house. Need to get a fiberoptic internet connection setup and a ZFS server. Someday this will happen. My data server cost me about 40 dollars a month. I have 30TB of high speed data. Right now it is a 1 gbs network. Upgrading to a 2.5 gbs soon. New router and switches are on order. 100 dollars for 2TB is decent when you figure in how much it cost me to run a dell r610 server with 18 hard drives. I use syncthing, it backs up my cellphone, windows 10, windows 11, and linux laptops. I also use Veeam Community edition for my windows machines to a different drive. It backups every night and sends me an email. That way I know it completes or fails. Veeam is really good.

[@sprtwlf9314]

Great video. I use pcloud as well and it's been very good.

[@Timm2003]

Im actually rn about to write my own backup tool, in c++ which also create checksums of the backed up files etc., but rn im depressed cuz of the segmentation faults it shows me but maybe in a week or two im done if i find some motivation to code.

[@MichaelDeBusk]

One of the great lies we've been told by motivational speakers is that, before we can do something, we have to feel motivated to do it. We have to feel some sort of "burning desire" or some nonsense like that. It's not true. Go sit down and write some code. Do it every day. Especially if you can do it at the same time every day. Doesn't matter if you feel a positive feeling about the idea of starting. If you enjoy coding, you'll have to "find some motivation" to stop.

[@Timm2003]

@@MichaelDeBusk yea probably true, but ima do some other stuff rn, wanna get a bit more familiar with nmap & metasploit.

[@jong8161]

thanks a lot for this video

[@donpeer4477]

Probably the cheapest online storage is Google Drive. My one recommendation is to encrypt everything you put online!

[@MichaelDeBusk]

Re: sitting and watching what rsync does during your backup You can tell rsync to write a log. See "--log-file" in the man page.

[@topherfungus8424]

Not sure what the benefit is of having multiple backups of the same source folders, you can use rsync like an archive where any new file, or changed file will be persisted. This way you can have one folder for each host that will be a snapshot of what the original host looked like the night before. Having multiple dates won't help me if I lose the remote drive/server anyways.

[@TheLinuxCast]

I've been burned by the --delete option before where things I didn't want to be deleted were deleted. So I keep everything separate.

[@topherfungus8424]

Yeah looks like you're pretty well covered. Thanks for the video.

[@ArniesTech]

Hey, your hair is a bit longer, isn't it? Makes a completely new Matt 💪😁

[@TheLinuxCast]

In need of a haircut, fo sho

[@ruvuzaisaac7203]

Matt, can you please share a link to you polybar config?

[@TheLinuxCast]

gitlab.com/thelinuxcast

[@channel-uz9fz]

I really wanted to hear about Btrfs backups, and clicked on this video specifically for it :( 15:40

[@TheLinuxCast]

The btrfs video will come, but I think it deserves its own video, tbh

[@channel-uz9fz]

@@TheLinuxCast Let's see if I reinstalled correctly 😅

[@petepf3212]

I backup my entire root filesystem with rsync. Just in case an update breaks something, I can easily restore to before update or install. Or I can easily clone my setup to use in vm or another computer.

[@HectorGonzalez-vp1ss]

How do you clone your set up into a vm?

[@patrickmclaughlin6013]

Rsync video sounds good

[@chuckmuckamuck8001]

You should research AWS S3 Deep Archive, 1 TB is $1.01 / month or about $12 / year.

[@TheLinuxCast]

I'll look at it. But it's more expensive than pcloud and less accessable

[@MichaelDeBusk]

That'd be fine for movies, music, and encrypted financial records you're archiving.

[@TheLinuxCast]

@@MichaelDeBusk the movies point is a good one. I'll look into it.

[@MichaelDeBusk]

@@TheLinuxCast Yes, the "deep archive" tier is for stuff you don't need immediate access to. If you have to wait a few days to watch "The Shawshank Redemption" again, that's not bad. It'll still be a great movie then.

[@mnsjay82]

Thank´s ;)

[@tiitulitii]

How to format an ssd the most easily in Linux?

[@IIGrayfoxII]

Your best bet is to use wither Gparted or KDE partiton manager Use the one based off your distro. You can also right click the drive that appears on the left plane and select format Otherwise you can use the mkfs command in the terminal

[@noferblatz]

The only reason for doing backups indexed by date is if you make changes and need to go back to a restore point. Otherwise, you can simply backup to a single location every time. And if you don't want to have to set everything up again if your machine explodes, you should back up /etc and maybe /var. In this case, you must be root, and it's best to make a backup script in the /etc/cron.daily directory.

[@ghost-user559]

One single backup is cheaper and less stressful but a terrible Idea. A file system corruption or serious errors and you can ruin your entire backup instantly.

[@tmendoza6]

WOW! my Movie if you know what I mean is the must importunate collection i have great Video

[@CyperN077]

Backup your backup then back that up. Matt I keep 4 to 5 on hand if possible.

[@cafe5231]

I am here tto join all of you in soft Journey

[@Nick-zw7gg]

So this backs up multiple copies of the same folder or just changes to the file?

[@TheLinuxCast]

It can do both. Depends on the tags you use. I don't do a good job explaining it, sadly.

[@Nick-zw7gg]

@@TheLinuxCast ok cool! Because I dont want to keep copying the whole directory every time

[@TheLinuxCast]

@@Nick-zw7gg the man page for rsync is pretty good.

[@itsfish8672]

GVM.

[@nagendrarao631]

wheres the link?

[@TheLinuxCast]

In the video description. Says "dotfiles"

[@ekim4926]

“I don’t need to backup my steam folder bc I can just re-download it.” Obviously you don’t mod your games :)

[@TheLinuxCast]

Nope. Not much of a gamer.

[@IIGrayfoxII]

You should keep a backup of mods you make for games.

[@VictoriaMan69]

Yes, $100 is a lot of money.

[@tiitulitii]

Hey, please make sure that you watch the following health solution. Best wishes! How to Start Keto Correctly - Dr. Berg

[@jethrot100]

In the same vein, have you ever considered covering the subject of avoiding data loss in the first place. Commonly a folder such as "Maree's Files" (windows) or files in "Downloads" (Linux) just disappear. These events happened both to myself (Fedora) and a friend 600Ks away, (Windoz11.) Both sets of files did turn up eventually and it was obviously a case of operator error. Needless to say neither were backed up, but it caused considerable grief to my friend who thought they had lost 20 years worth worth of files, although I did tell her the files were most likely still there, and thankfully that turned out to be true. But to get to the point, is there a simple solution to the problem of inadvertently moving files from important folders?

[@sotecluxan4221]

Naizzz topic, important, more than anything else. Most ppl do not grasp it, but whine a lot, in case....

[@jimmyrichards5595]

I’m a simple guy. I use MyLuckyBackup!