Hello, I have a bunch of personal data - videos, pictures, documents, PDFs etc. that I want to backup.
I am wondering what is the best way to do this?
Requirements -
- I want to backup multiple different folders from my Linux computer - it is not a full disk backup.
- Encryption would be great to have.
- This needs to be a long term backup - like few years or more.
- Data - small videos, pictures, PDFs, text files, documents, etc. Total size - less than 50-60 GB (for now - but it can increase over time).
- I want to be able to incrementally add more data to backup of respective folders (e.g. new photos, documents etc.), or even add new folders.
- After backup, I want to be able to cleanup my hard disk, reinstall OS or restore data from backup onto a completely new system in a new directory.
- I do not care about stuff like file metadata like owner user, permissions etc.
Questions -
- Is one or more flash drives good for such kind of backup? Or would it get corrupt within few years?
- I found Borg backup, but it suggests that backup should be restored on the same machine - which does not seem to fit my use case.
- It also suggests to keep Borg config directory - which again conflicts with restoring or adding new items from a different system.
- Not sure how well this would work if restoring on a new system?
- Are there any better alternatives?
- If I do use Borg, should using one repository per folder be the way to go about it? Or is there a better way?
- In Borg itself, I am thinking of using the
repokey method (key stored with the repository) - and store the passphrase in a KeePass database on a different flash drive. Any different suggestions?
Please feel free to suggest any alternatives or improvements to my plan?
What do you mean by configuration and backup script?
Configuration as in dotfiles?
What does a backup script look like? Like a list of borg commands - one for each directory + repo which you want to backup? Or something more?
The configuration is whatever borg saved in ~/.config.
A script would have commands to
I have my backups set up to retain a two year old archive, a one year old one, one for the last twelve months, last four weeks and last seven days.