Backups Aren't Simple • Hacker News Board

Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#61

Post by BLKNSLVR » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 3:59 AM UTC

publlus_enigma wrote: post #20

There are four times in my life I have suffered regrettable data loss incidents. The first was when the telephone pole outside our house was struck directly by lightning. Not only was it the loudest thing I have ever heard, the current surged through the telephone line, into the internal fax modem, and fries everything within its vicinity. I was 10. I did have backuos, but only only floppy and they didn't cover every…

OneDrive...

So much fail in one single product.

Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#62

Post by ryuuseijin » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 4:01 AM UTC

A bit of a tangent, but the linked rsnapshot tool is about 7k lines of perl code. The COPYING file is 20 years old and it's still maintained, the last change was 6 months ago. I'm feeling really old.

[1]: https://github.com/rsnapshot/rsnapshot/blob/master/rsnapshot...

Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#63

Post by dsego » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 4:02 AM UTC

mrheosuper wrote: post #41

jeffbee wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mainstream DSLRs with dual card slots came out 22 years ago.

Sadly after 22 years, it's still considered a "high-end" feature. Even on $1600 Fujifilm x100vi, there is still single SD slot.

I also have the same fuji. Digital cameras are still in the stone ages. I think Tony Northrup covered it well. Nothing has changed since digital cameras came to market, the workflow is still the same, copy files from a card to PC. They aren't connected to the internet, they don't have automatic syncing to cloud for backups or sharing, fuji doesn't even have a gps chip built in to store the location (only works if connected to a smartphone), they can't be locked via fingerprint scanner. It's all tech from 25 years ago.

Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#64

Post by dsego » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 4:02 AM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #44

jeffbee wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mainstream DSLRs with dual card slots came out 22 years ago.

I would hope they have some feature for automatic backup to your phone over bluetooth or such today.

They do transfer, but it's not automatic.

Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#65

Post by dsego » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 4:06 AM UTC

mrheosuper wrote: post #45

As an average-techie person, the only piece of data that i truly practice 3-2-1 is photos and videos. 1 on my phone, 1 on my small server running Immich, and 1 is on Google Photo(sadly, the quality is loss, but i can live with that). Most of other data i only have 2 backup, usually 1 at my local machine(code) and 1 online(github). Yeah it's not ideal, but another question to ask yourself, is it truly worth it. I trus…

I tried to set up something similar, photos and videos on local NAS + cloud storage. Also with data loss, eg. I don't sync any large RAW camera files to cloud. I clone my local machine with CCC onto an external drive, that way it should be easy to just restore the last state onto a new machine. So I think it's archival storage for media vs snapshots of your working setup so you can restore quickly.

Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#66

Post by BLKNSLVR » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 4:07 AM UTC

voiceofunreason wrote: post #32

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #27

A friend of mine used to work at Veritas[0] making enterprise data retention solutions. When I spoke about their product as being "making backups", he corrected me by saying: We are not in the backup business. We are in the restoration business. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup_Exec

Backups are boring. Restores, on the other hand, are often exciting.

Backups can be automated. Restores are a manual, heightened-attention, deep-focus process.

Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#67

Post by wolfi1 » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 4:09 AM UTC

concerning backups, when it comes to disaster recovery you need a strategy for restoring as well, sometimes it's not only the data you would need but the systems as well

Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#68

Post by bnegreve » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 4:12 AM UTC

I have a cron script that rsync my entire home directory every day with a remote server. Since rsync doesn't remove remote files, I re-create a backup from scratch the first day of each month and store a copy of the previous one.

Using old standardized open source tools means it survives system updates without having to fix anything for years. I got my laptop stolen/lost 3 times over the past 15 years, and I have always been able to restore everything the next day on a new laptop, in the time it takes to transfer the files over the network.

I haven't given much thought, I'm sure there is a realistic scenario where this strategy would fails but I haven't found it yet.

Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#69

Post by robmccoll » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 4:13 AM UTC

dsego wrote: post #64

jimmaswell wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would hope they have some feature for automatic backup to your phone over bluetooth or such today.

They do transfer, but it's not automatic.

My Nikon ZF transfers to my phone through Nikon's SnapBridge app automatically.

Re: Backups Aren't Simple

#70

Post by everybodyknows » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 4:13 AM UTC

m463 wrote: post #49

I've given out jwz's link to several people: https://www.jwz.org/doc/backups.html (maybe copy/paste this into browser instead of following link, since referrer from hn apparently does something)

> have this happen every morning at 5AM by creating a temporary text file containing this line: 0 5 * * * rsync -vax --delete --ignore-errors / /Volumes/Backup/

This leaves you needlessly exposed to this failure mode: Commit some "braino" that wipes out some recent work. Go to bed without noticing the loss. 5am rsync run wipes your backup as well.

The fix is to back up to not just one but to a rotation of images. Use --link-dest to reduce storage overhead to the size of the directory hierarchy only.