Hi all, I’m just getting my feet wet in self hosting and have a plan to start with Nextcloud on a Pi 4 for photo backups, and then try other things for calendar, phone backups, media hosting, etc.
One thing I worry about is losing my data. I have heard “if it’s not backed up in two locations, it’s not backed up.” I’m curious what all of you do for backing up the setup. Remote backup to hard drives in the garage? Pay for cloud backup and encrypt it? Just another backup site over wifi in the house?
I’d be most afraid of losing photos and if there were a house fire or something. So my inital thought was a way of backing up to a server in my detached garage in a weather resistent container, but I want to know what you all think. Thanks for any insight.
I want to start by saying I am not suggesting you use any of the products these companies offer, but I’m linking to the standard strategy - 3-2-1.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/
https://www.acronis.com/en/blog/posts/backup-rule/
https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatabackup/definition/3-2-1-Backup-Strategy
For me, I have two boxes for NAS. One is the prod, one is the backup of anything I can’t replace (or can’t replace easily). I have another at the home of a member of my family, which gets a weekly diff. I also backup an encrypted set to cloud storage I got some time ago. So I actually have 4 sets of data (1 prod + 3 backups), two off-site locations. The media portion is treated differently today - it used to be tape, DVD backups, whatever, but today I consider different devices and cloud storage to fit that bill. In which case I have an abundance of forms of storage media
Mine goes a slight bit past what’s needed for 3-2-1 which is appropriate for me. I consider 3-2-1 the minimum for any data considered critical or irreplaceable.
For me, that includes home movies, family photos, financial records, etc. It does not include my rips of my DVD collection. It does include config files and backups of services I run though.
The right backup strategy depends on your own concern about data. If I lost the photos/videos of my kids, I’d be devastated. If I lost the rips of VHS tapes my dad recorded, I’d be devastated.
If I lost the iso for a random esoteric piece of hardware that has its drivers, I’d be disappointed but its not a big deal.
Prioritize your data. Absolutely critical, important, preferred to keep, annoying but replaceable, and who cares I’ll just download it again if I have to.
Once you know how much you need to store for each of those, add a bit to plan ahead, and see what backup strategy fits as you move down the priority list, and go from there.