datahoarder

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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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Recommendations for an inexpensive DIY backup? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 month ago by beastlykings@sh.itjust.works to c/datahoarder@lemmy.ml

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Hi there, I've been meaning to go get more serious about my data. I have minimal backups, and some stuff is not backed up at all. I'm begging for disaster.

Here's what I've got: 2 8tb drives almost full in universal external enclosures A small formfactor PC as a server, with one 8tb drive connected. An unused raspberry pi. No knowledge of how to properly use zfs.

Here's what I want: I've decided I don't need raid. I don't want the extra cost of drives or electricity, and I don't need uptime. I just need backups. I want to use what drives I have, and an additional 16tb drive I'll buy.

My thought was that I would replace the 8tb drive with a 16tb one, format it with zfs (primarily to avoid bit rot. I'll need to learn how to check for this), then back it up across the two 8tb drives as a cold backup. Either as two separate drives somehow? Btrfs volume extension? Or a jbod connected to the raspberry pi, that I leave unplugged except for when it's time to sync the new data?

Or do you have a similarly cheap solution that's less janky?

I just want to back up my data, with an amount of rot protection, cheaply.

I understand that it might make sense to invest in something a bit more robust right now, and fill it with drives as needed.

But the thing I keep coming to is the cold backup. How can you keep cold backups over several hard drives, without an entire second server to do the work?

Thanks for listening to my rambling.

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[–] jbd@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Would you mind sharing where you buy drives this cheap? I'm looking to buy some.

[–] ayaya@lemdro.id 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Just eBay. Unfortunately it looks like prices are way up from when I last bought some. I got 2 in December for $60 + $10 shipping.

[–] jbd@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That was a good deal. Are you at all concerned about the "power on time" when you buy used?

[–] ayaya@lemdro.id 2 points 2 days ago

Not at all. I built my NAS in 2020 so it's been over 5 years and I've had 20 drives running 24/7 that whole time. Some of the original ones I have swapped out for larger drives. But some of the older 3TB ones have over 80,000 hours on them and are still chugging along.

I use unRAID so when one does eventually die I can just replace it and rebuild pretty painlessly. Originally I expected to lose at least 1 per year but they just don't die. Maybe I'm lucky.

Also I noticed even though 8TB has skyrocketed, looks like 6TB are still around $35 and 3TB are as low as $13 if you are okay with smaller sizes.