this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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Someone on Lemmy posted a phrase recently: "If you're not prepared to manage backups then you're not prepared to self host."

This seems like not only sound advice but a crucial attitude. My backup plans have been fairly sporadic as I've been entering into the world of self hosting. I'm now at a point where I have enough useful software and content that losing my hard drive would be a serious bummer. All of my most valuable content is backed up in one way or another, but it's time for me to get serious.

I'm currently running an Ubuntu Server with a number of Docker containers, and lots of audio, video, and documents. I'd like to be able to back up everything to a reliable cloud service. I currently have a subscription to proton drive, which is a nice padding to have, but which I knew from the start would not be really adequate. Especially since there is no native Linux proton drive capability.

I've read good things about iDrive, S3, and Backblaze. Which one do you use? Would you recommend it? What makes your short list? what is the best value?

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[–] Unforeseen@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I use the unlimited consumer backblaze with private key on a windows VM. I provision a 40tb iscsi connection to the VM from a NAS and all kinds of various homelab systems and devices store thier backups there. Works great and is the cheapest possible option at $9 a month.

[–] Goodtoknow@lemmy.ca 1 points 17 minutes ago

Is that not against their TOS? Could make the service more expensive for the rest of us

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Backblaze 200% of the time.

The only thing that sucks about backblaze is that they're not designed for enterprise. No account balances. No multi users.

[–] Nexy@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)
[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 2 points 2 hours ago

Well, no, but I use it for free.

Because backblaze doesn't let you maintain an account balance, I almost had all my data get deleted one time my credit card false-positive blocked the payment (for "my protection").

I ended up getting a credit card specifically for B2. I use it for nothing else.

Turns out some credit card companies dont charge you anything if your bill for the month is <$1. So, yeah, I accidentally get backblaze for free.

[–] rutrum@lm.paradisus.day 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I use borgbackup to create backups. I point backups to another home computer and borgbase.com. Borg itself is an amazing tool. I think you should learn how it works even if it doesnt end up being the best fit for you.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 1 points 3 hours ago

One of few ransomware protected solutions

[–] calamityjanitor@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

I've been using pcloud. They do one time upfront payments for 'lifetime' cloud storage. Catch a sale and it's ~$160/TB. For something long term like backups it seems unbeatable. To the point I sort of don't expect them to actually last forever, but if they last 2-3 years it's a decent deal still.

Use rclone to upload my files, honestly not ideal though since it's meant for file synchronisation not backups. Also they are dog slow. Downloading my 4TBs takes ~10 days.

[–] DarkAngelofMusic@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 7 hours ago

I've been using rsync.net for a while now. It's been stable, fast, and relatively inexpensive. There's also the benefit that it's easy to script automated backups directly to it. For more Dropbox-like functionality, I have a Nextcloud instance that uses rsync.net as external storage. It's been great so far!

[–] bartvbl@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

I'm a long time user of jottacloud. It's not really meant for 10TB+, but works great for what I need it to do.

[–] dawa@programming.dev 1 points 8 hours ago

I'm on Pcloud, server with rsync+rclone to move files from file system to cloud and use it as a unified file system.

The lifetime storage offer from pcloud has been worth it for me and I even upgraded it from 2 to 12 TB

[–] vividspecter@lemm.ee 9 points 14 hours ago (3 children)

A server in a friend/family member's home. All of the cloud based backups I've encountered seem either unaffordable or have annoying limitations.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 1 points 3 hours ago

This. Install a NAS in a friend's house, give them 10% of the capacity as a thank you.

[–] egonallanon@lemm.ee 1 points 9 hours ago

Yup I've got a box in my mum's house that all my off site backups go to and it's a damn site cheaper just to give her some money for the electricity cost of it each month than pay for any cloud service.

[–] droolio@feddit.uk 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

100% this. OP, whatever solution you come up with, strongly consider disentangling your backup 'storage' from the platform or software, so you're not 'locked in'.

IMO, you want to have something universal, that works with both local and 'cloud' (ideally off-site on a own/family/friend's NAS; far less expensive in the long run). Trust me, as someone who came from CrashPlan and moved to Duplicacy 8 years ago, I no longer worry about how robust my backups are, as I can practice 3-2-1 on my own terms.

[–] calmluck9349@infosec.pub 16 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

3,2,1.

My nas is a Synology with raid.

  1. Backup with versions to a single large HD via USB. This ransomware protection or accidental deletion. (Rsync)
  2. Offsite copy to backblaze b2.One version. (Rsync) (~$6/month) This would be natual disaster protection. flood, fire.
  3. Second not raided cheaper Synology at a friends on the other coast. This has ~3 versions. Sorta the backup to the first two.
[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 1 points 3 hours ago

You can get append only backups on backblaze with their lifecycle rules. So that can have ransomware protection too

[–] lemmeBe@sh.itjust.works 5 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

3, 2, 1. ❤

Without implementing this, it's a delusion that some company, regardless of the size and reputation, can be trusted to keep our data safe.

[–] coffeetastesbadlikecoffee@sh.itjust.works 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Also don't forget to restore test, otherwise you may as well not do backups. I have a reminder for once a year to test them, not just if it works but also what the performance is just in case.

[–] qwexfle@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 hours ago

This is the part that gets me. I don't know how to automate this. I periodically retrieve something from the backups, which, so far, has worked. That's not really good insurance, though. Any suggests or resources, ideally for borg and/restic?

[–] rhys@mastodon.rhys.wtf 2 points 11 hours ago

@gedaliyah If you're not married to managed cloud services, services like rsync.net or a Hetzner storage box work very well. They require more effort, but you have complete control and can do some fun things (like using rclone's crypt module with them). Plus rsync.net is super useful if your sources use ZFS.

Of the cloud providers, Backblaze is the one that anecdotally seems most popular.

[–] bier@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 11 hours ago

If you're talking multiple Terrabytes and are located in the EU you might want to consider AWS Glacier I have like 6Tb on there and pay sub 20€ p.m. If you're in the EU you can request one free migration download by contacting the support. Otherwise you'll pay thousands.

[–] Ghostbanjo1949@lemmy.mengsk.org 4 points 17 hours ago

I use iDrive, 20TB for a couple hundred bucks a year. I've not found anything that compares to that in pricing. Backblaze I think it's about $1600 a year for the same storage and the major cloud providers are much higher than that. I view cloud backups as the the last line of defense in the backup strategy. So all the nice features that most providers offer at a significant price increase just don't make sense to me as I won't use them. I have the iDrive Linux app running it detects what's new in the monitored directories and shoves them up to the cloud hopefully to never be needed.

[–] kevincox@lemmy.ml 8 points 20 hours ago (6 children)

I've been using Restic to Backblaze B2.

I don't really trust B2 that much (I think it is mostly a single-DC kind of storage) but it is reasonably priced and easy to use. Plus as long as their failures aren't correlated with mine it should be fine.

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[–] paperd@lemmy.zip 11 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I use restic to backblaze b2.

[–] plasticcheese@lemmy.one 3 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Yep, Duplicacy to Backblaze B2 for me

[–] nnullzz@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago
[–] Wxfisch@lemmy.world 6 points 20 hours ago

I use Backblaze B2 through my Synology NAS to offsite my important data. Most things though I just backup locally and accept the risk of needing to rebuild certain things (like most of my movie/TV media files since I can just re-rip my physical media, and the storage costs are not worth the couple of days of time in that unlikely case).

I really think this is key when thinking about your backup strategy that is specific to self hosting compared to enterprise operations. The costs come out of our pockets with no revenue to back it up. Managing backups for self hosting IMO is just as much about understanding your risk appetite and then choosing a strategy to match that. For example I keep just single copy in B2, since the failure mode I’m looking to protect against is catastrophic failure of my NAS which holds my main backups and media. I then use Proton Drive and OneDrive to backup secrets for my 2FA setups and encryption for my B2 bucket. This isn’t how I would do it at work (we have a fair more robust, but much more expensive setup). But my costs for B2 are around $15/mo which I am fine with. When I tried keeping multiple copies it had grown to over $50/mo before I cared enough to really rethink things (the cost of the hobby I told myself).

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 6 points 22 hours ago (3 children)

I’m still looking for a case that can hold a Pi and a 3.5” drive that I can set up at someone else’s house.

[–] AtariDump@lemmy.world 6 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Tape/glue the Pi in the case to the HDD.

Done.

[–] pmk@piefed.social 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I've thought about gutting an old toaster, like for toasting bread, to house a raspberry pi and instead of slices of bread you can stick harddrives into the slots. Two bays. The prime motivation is just to be able to say that I can run Linux on a toaster. Next step would be running Linux on a dead badger I guess.

[–] mirisgaiss@lemmy.world 1 points 8 minutes ago

I would hope someone has made a toaster drive dock by now, missed opportunity

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[–] nickiam2@aussie.zone 2 points 17 hours ago

I use restic with a wrapper script to automate it on all of my machines. The backend storage can be anything that speaks S3, so B2, or iDrive would both work. I currently use Storj for my backend. It's globally distributed storage, so no single point of failure geographically and it's cheap. Backblaze is also a great company, but I've grown a little skeptical since they went public.

[–] schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business 6 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

Timely post.

I was about to make one because iDrive has decided to double their prices, probably because they could.

$30/tb/year to $50/tb/year is a pretty big jump, but they were also way under the market price so capitalism gonna capital and they're "optimizing" or someshit.

I've love to be able to push my stuff to some other provider for closer to that $30, but uh, yeah, no freaking clue who since $60/tb/year seems to be the more average price.

Alternately, a storage option that's not S3-based would also probably be acceptable. Backups are ~300gb, give or take, and the stuff that does need S3-style storage I can stuff in Cloudflare's free tier.

[–] pe1uca@lemmy.pe1uca.dev 1 points 15 hours ago

Yeah, it was $2.5/tb/month, now it's $4.1/tb/month.
Still cheaper than backblaze's $6 which seems the only other option everyone suggests, so it'll have to do for the moment.

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 1 points 17 hours ago

My idrive plan went from just over $100 to $250.

I created another account, paid for another year at a promotional price, and then deleted my old account.

I will eventually have to come up with a more sustainable cloud/off site backup now that i need more than just a few TB.

Since this is really my "last resort" backup, I'm not too concerned, as anything that would require me to actually restore from this backup set would likely be catastrophic in a life-ending way.

[–] grimer@lemmy.world 4 points 21 hours ago

My backup plan includes Backrest (restic) up to B2. So far so good!

[–] brewery@lemmy.world 5 points 22 hours ago

After some research on here and reddit about 6 months so, I settled on Borgbase and its been pretty good. I also manually save occasionally to proton drive but you're right to give up on that as a solution!

The hardest part was choosing the backup method and properly setting up Borg or restic on my machine properly, especially with docker and databases. I have ended up with adding db backup images to each container with an important db, saving to a specific folder. Then that and all the files are backed up by restic to an attached external drive at well as borgbase. This happens at a specific time in the morning and found a restic action to stop all docker containers first, back them up, then spin them back up. I am find the guides that I used if it's helpful to you.

I also checked my backups a few times and found a few small problems I had to fix. I got the message from order users several times that your backups are useless unless you regularly test them.

[–] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 3 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I use Storj, it’s been my favorite for years.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Do you mine? Always sounded like the best option if you dont have a friend in another georegion to replicate-to

[–] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 2 points 2 hours ago

I did for a few years when the network started, but it became increasingly difficult to do so from a residential IP with slow upload speeds (cable internet).

[–] 2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 20 hours ago

I use borgbackup, with daily backup to borgbase.

At some point I want to set up a distributed file system between multiple locations as both a backup target and also a network share with automatic snapshots or some other undelete mechanism, but I still need to get the hardware for that and the current setup works well

[–] flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago

I use 2 matching Synology NAS systems. 1 backs up to the other daily. Then one of them backs up to Synology C2 weekly.

[–] doeknius_gloek@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 21 hours ago

I can recommend Restic with Wasabi S3 as cloud storage backend.

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