my data backup plan 💾🔃
I don't know about you, but I have a lot of data: photos, university course work, books, source code, etc, etc, etc. In the past, I would just throw this data wherever it best fit (google photos, google drive, github, etc) and sort of depended on the fact that everything would be safe as is!
Then, I started to have things like this happen:
- I lost ~450GB of RAW photos that I was storing on an external hard drive when I moved.
- Google Photos downgraded lots of my photos to "high quality" (hot tip: they're not very high quality) when I ran out of Google Drive space.
- I lost the source code for a significant research project I did in univeristy when a classmate deleted the repo.
Ouch...
This data loss could probably have been avoided if I would have been a little more intentional in how I managed my data. Since then, I've invested in a NAS, experimented a bunch, and am now in the process of putting together a personal backup plan
Another thing I think is important about having a bit of an individual data backup plan, is that everyone's data is different!
For example: I have source code on GitHub that I want to backup, which requires some pretty specific tools. Others might have a large bluray collection that they want to backup and have access to. naturally their backup solution would end up looking quite different than mine.
I have an Unraid NAS Server that I use as my primary backup location. It holds most of my important files, and has a bunch of nerdy features that let me experiment with virtualization and docker.
The server has 4TB of effective storage set up in raid 1 (2 x 4TB drives), but I have room to upgrade to 8TB if I ever need to.
These tools are all hosted on my local Unraid Server.
- RClone: for syncing files on my Unraid server to cloud backup locations
- NextCloud: for remote access to my photos, documents, and other data. Think of NextCloud like a personal Google Drive.
- GitHub Backup: A simple app that does a nightly sync of all my code on github to my unraid server.
- Trillium: A personal knowledge base. I use this to keep daily work notes, meeting notes, and general information / documentation. Think of Trillium like a personal Notion.
- Home Assistant: for managing home automation devices and NFC tags.
- NGINX Reverse Proxy: A simple reverse proxy gui. Makes my services available from the internet.
While I try to keep as much as I can local, there are some tools that are just better in the cloud.
- Cloudflare: DNS management and proxy. They rock
- BackBlaze B2: very affordable cloud based backup solution that I push my important files to nightly
WIP: this is going to be an explanation of my backup-plan, inspired by Jeff Geerling's Backup plan video