How long should I keep my local and off-site backups? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by dataprolet@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/techsupport@lemmy.world

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I'm currently using BackInTime and TimeShift to create local backups of my system and personal data. I configured both to keep 7 daily, 4 weekly and 6 monthly backups. I use this setup on my Desktop-PC as well as on my laptop.
Now I also use BorgBackup to create an additional backup of my local backups and right now use the same retention policy, so keeping 7 daily, 4 weekly, 6 monthly and 1 yearly backup.
This turned out to be a lot of data and my 1 TB off-site storage solution is currently using 953 GB of storage.
Now I was wondering if my double retention policy is even making sense and what others are using. So how long do you usually keep backups? How many backups do you keep and what would you suggest for my setup?

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[-] reddthat@reddthat.com 0 points 1 year ago

Keep it as long as your data changes. 3 months is a good amount for myself. The backups are only good for deleted documents (for me).
I always think to myself, at what point will that data still be valuable? Most of the time all the important stuff sticks around forever, and if you delete a document how long till you realised? A day? A month? Half a year?

That might help cull some of the older data.

You could always use a different host for your offsite. We use Wasabi storage which is $6-7/TB/m for Reddthat, and for object storage it's great. Or could even use B2 etc. But for personal data a good 70$/y might be out of your budget. If borgbackup can handle s3 it can handle wasabi.

[-] dataprolet@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks, but that's not really helping me. I hoped for maybe advice to change my retention policy..

[-] reddthat@reddthat.com 2 points 1 year ago

Sorry! Was drinking! It was probably lost in the wall of text.

I only got up to 3 months, with a retention policy of 7day, 4weeks, 3months as the dedupe is very good. If I didn't have dedupe it would be only up to 4 weeks.

The reasons are, I notice if I've lost a file in <3months and if I lose a drive the latest backup would be the one I restore from. (Yesterday in this case).
Why would I ever need the 1 year old backup?

Hope that makes more sense.

this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023

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