What is your personal backup strategy?

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malikto44@reddit

I just use a cloud provider, like iCloud or Dropbox. I have a dedicated PC whose only purpose in life is to sync all the cloud providers to a disk. Then, that disk is then backed up to another external drive, as well as to Wasabi. This way, if something blows up my cloud provider data, I can do a restore fairly easily, if the cloud storage provider doesn't have a snapshot at hand. From there, it depends on the OS: For Macs and Windows, I use ARQ Backup. This is -not- an image backup utility, but backs files up to a local S3 server and to Wasabi. For Macs, I have an old Time Capsule which backups go to. For Windows, I have an external drive and Veeam Agent. This allows for image based restores if needed, and I can swap external drives for offline backups. Linux backed up to a NAS via Borg Backup, and the NAS syncs the Borg repository to Wasabi. If I have to directly restore from Wasabi, that's what `rclone` is for. Yes, there is redundancy here, especially with image and local backups, but I have had glitches happen, so I like having different types of backups.

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basicallybasshead@reddit

I have a similar backup strategy in place. I use Time Capsule for Macs and Veeam Agent for Windows for image-based backups. Swapping out external drives for offline backups is a great practice as it provides protection against ransomware and other online threats. Currently, I'm considering building a Linux hardened repository for immutability, as discussed here: [https://www.veeam.com/blog/immutable-backup-solutions-linux-hardened-repository.html](https://www.veeam.com/blog/immutable-backup-solutions-linux-hardened-repository.html). I'm hesitating between two options: TrueNAS Scale [https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/hardened-backup-repository-with-truenas.97608/](https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/hardened-backup-repository-with-truenas.97608/) and Starwind [https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/starwind-san-nas-as-hardened-repository-for-veeam-br](https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/starwind-san-nas-as-hardened-repository-for-veeam-br).

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malikto44@reddit

As an alternative to a Linux Veeam hardened repository, have you thought of using MinIO? I have used this where I stood up Ubuntu, added ZFS, added MinIO, and used that. You can also install it on TrueNAS SCALE via [this](https://www.truenas.com/docs/scale/23.10/scaletutorials/apps/communityapps/minioapp/) method. What this brings to the table is S3 immutable objects. Very similar to the Linux hardened repository, but because it is a generic S3 server, any backup program, be it Veeam, Nakivo, Commvault, or whatnot can easily use it. I chose this route because even if an attacker completely got control of the Veeam console, they wouldn't be able to modify the objects, assuming they couldn't get access to the MinIO server (and locking down a server isn't bad.) If you want, and you have a load balancer you can also scale MinIO to multiple machines, although they need to have as close to identical disk configurations. I went from using MinIO on a Raspberry Pi to an array of machines at a previous job for multi-petabyte storage.

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SandeLissona@reddit

Using MinIO for S3-compatible object storage is an excellent alternative to consider over Veeam's or Nakivo's hardened repository as you mentioned for a repo independent from the backup product. You make a great point that even if an attacker compromises the backup software, the objects on MinIO stay locked down and immutable as an extra layer of defense. Scaling up to multiple servers behind a load balancer is another nice advantage over the single hardened repo host. I really like the flexibility of deploying MinIO on anything from a Raspberry Pi up to distributed multi-PB storage clusters. Fits a wide range of use cases. Nakivo plus distributed MinIO makes for a very resilient and scalable backup architecture.

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basicallybasshead@reddit

I've heard about that. Thank you, I have to explore this option.

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Maro1947@reddit

Similar - I have a beast of an old Dell Tower Server that is responsible for that

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Traditional-Sector75@reddit

Data is stored on the qnap NAS in my home office, a local backup (nightly rsync) to a standalone USB drive for a local copy (I do plan on changing this out for a couple of disks in RAID1) and a nightly backup from the qnap to the cloud (encrypted) for files that I can't easily download again, like family photos, documents etc. I have a copy of the encryption key in the safe at home and another copy in a family members safe just in case. Need that off-site copy just in case. The local copy is fine if the NAS dies but if there's a fire or flood then I risk losing both source data and local backup copy... I'm not massively bothered about stuff I can download again but anything that's unique to the family I want all 3 copies. That's on top of the phone automatically saving photos to Google.

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Pvt-Snafu@reddit

An old Synology NAS plus B2 with Rclone. Quite simple but does the job for me.

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dasdzoni@reddit

I dont

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bbqwatermelon@reddit

A painters house is never painted

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dasdzoni@reddit

Never heard that one before 🤣. I always use the mechanic drives the worst car

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Titanium125@reddit

All the important data is stored only my server. That is backed up to backblaze and OneDrive, encrypted using rclone. My computer is also backed up to the server. All the backups exist in two places. Either an additional backup server I have in the house, or the cloud. The stuff that’s truly irreplaceable follows the 3-2-1-0 method. I don’t have anything offline. The more replaceable the data, the worse the backup. My Plex data isn’t backed up at all. It’s low priority.

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frogmicky@reddit

I have a 1TB NVME in an enclosure that's encrypted.

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OptimalCynic@reddit

> cloud to drive backup solution Rclone works in both directions

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frogmicky@reddit

Thanks.

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thearctican@reddit

I accept that none of my own data is really that important to me. Except for authentication keys. I keep all of my MFA secrets on an external encrypted drive and have three yubikeys for FIDO/Webauthn registrations

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Cylerhusk@reddit

Nada. I just hope the cloud doesn’t crash and lose all my data. Not too worried about crypto on my personal stuff either, I’m confident in my ability to secure my own data. It would suck to lose my photo library, but outside of that nothing else I have would just bring the world crashing down on me if I lost it.

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PCLOAD_LETTER@reddit

Personal DR plan is more of a rebuild than a restart. Google Photos/Drive, some stuff still on Dropbox, Bitwarden with recovery codes in the safe.

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amplifizzle@reddit

Data comes and goes.

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Ferretau@reddit

Cloud storage / Offline backup one onsite and the other offsite (brothers / mates place ) with a rotation of backup devices Son / Father / Grandfather. For the truly paranoid bury a few Usb Storage drives in concrete with a USB lead to the surface and backup to it, that should cover if the house explodes.

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g00nie_nz@reddit

NAS and private S3.

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Brett707@reddit

I back mine and my wife's systems up to my media server with the Veeam Agent for Windows. I run backblaze on it to back up the OS and my photos and the veeam backups.

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Maro1947@reddit

Phone backs up to OneDrive and Google. They also have my documents backed up Have a NAS that replicates them and stores copies of Laptop backups I'm old-school enough to offsite a rotating 1TB hard drive - change them over every couple of months

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cubic_sq@reddit

Google Workspace -> KeepIT Local data -> Google Drive (and then to KeepIT) + Truenas + LucidLink basic And export pw manager to Keepass weekly

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socksonachicken@reddit

Nothing fancy. Just a NAS I built with some old junk parts and a couple 8TB drives.

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lazy-parasaurolophus@reddit

I use backblaze on my PC and Google 100gb subscription for phone.

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bloodyrude@reddit

iDrive backs up both Macbooks in our family every day.

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Evernight2025@reddit

My family pictures go to OneDrive, Google Drive, and an external hard drive. Documents and everything else go to OneDrive and an external hard drive.

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darkwyrm42@reddit

Synology backing up to BackBlaze B2

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Frankbalboni@reddit

My strategy - never hold anything important or that I would ever need on any of my devices.

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serverhorror@reddit

What about the porn collection?

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serverhorror@reddit

I pay Google Workspace and GitHub. Their guarantees are good enough for me to consider this a backup.

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Impressive-Cap1140@reddit

Veeam is primary and have been testing Duplicati to a Linux box. Veeam goes to a TrueNAS on same network.

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pmd006@reddit

2TB iCloud for my wife and I (full device backups and Photo/Videos) My personal PC, OneDrive for stuff like photos and videos. The rest is stuff I can live without. No full system backup. I don't think I've ever had a need for a full system backup of my personal PC. Backblaze on my PlexServer (because I have no documentation on every tweak i've made over the 5 years I've had it so it'd be annoying to rebuild from scratch). Anything more complex would probably involve me "working" in my leisure time which is exactly what I don't want to do. If somehow every device I own poofed out of existence, I'd be annoyed but that's it.

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Impressive-Cap1140@reddit

Woah a sysadmin using iOS! I get so much crap at work for being the only Apple user

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WhiskyIsRisky@reddit

SyncThing from our phones to my Qnap NAS, Deja Dup from my laptop to the NAS. NAS backs up to S3 Glacier.

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Relgisri@reddit

hope

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Jellovator@reddit

I use robocopy with a daily schedule task to copy my documents folders to my Google drive (S:). Phone backs up pics and docs to Google drive.

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EncodingLastingOgre@reddit

Crashplan saved my ass years ago. Been happy to pay the $10/mo ever since

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craigmontHunter@reddit

My regular important stuff is synced to my Unraid NAS with Nextcloud, including documents and phone pictures. The data from there is then backed up to my one drive account using duplicati. I also disable virtual files, so all of my computers have a reasonably current copy of everything at any given time.

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BlueHatBrit@reddit

I use Dropbox for a lot of stuff for it's auto syncing across devices etc. Then I also backup all the important data from all the computers in the house. I use Arq on windows and Mac and it's pretty great to be honest. It backs up to S3 and Backblaze daily and that's good enough for all the home computers. Unfortunately it doesn't cover Linux, but I don't keep any important data on there other than code. This is all pushed to a code forge so the only thing I'd lose if it died would be maybe a little bit of side project work. I could setup restic or something but haven't bothered so far. The only things this doesn't cover are photos from mobile phones (only thing we care about). For me and the Mrs these go to Google photos automatically but I'm working on getting them into Dropbox somehow instead. Long term I'd like to get a nas for local backups so I can restore faster and for cheap if it's just a device problem. But they're not cheap so I've not done it yet. This feels like it strikes a good balance of cheap, easy to manage, and all my data is in multiple places. It may not be ideal to restore from S3, but I'm not a data hoarder. Realistically we're talking important documents like insurance policies etc, and photos for the most part. That means I'm not even really hitting a over 1TB of data that we care about. I absolutely could just backup the world, but I don't have kids so spending a weekend reinstalling everything and reconfiguring isn't a huge issue for me. The bit that would be painful is my dedicated server with Hetzner. That has full IaC though and backups of all the db and blob data from the various applications I run on there using restic. It's all on S3 and Backblaze as well so I feel fairly covered. If I did lose everything on there, it would be frustrating but really not the end of the world through.

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megasxl264@reddit

Don't keep stuff around that needs one

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xDictate@reddit

Cloud provider for most stuff - OneDrive, Google drive, iCloud, etc. For my RAW file library I keep my back catalog on an external SSD and just rclone to backblaze b2 once in a while.

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MagnaCustos@reddit

Pray

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PenlessScribe@reddit

I subscribe to two backup services, but I don't know how well they'll actually protect me from ransomware. Anyone who takes over my PC can launch the backup services' apps and clear the set of directories backed up, which IIUC deletes all the backups. So I occasionally copy everything to an external HDD and put it in a safe deposit box.

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a60v@reddit

I have three classes of files: \- absolutely critical, can't possibly lose, files - about 50GB, high rate of change \- larger files (mostly downloaded video stuff) that I want to keep, but would not lose too much sleep about if lost - about 2TB - low rate of change \- large archived files (mostly video) - about 10TB - never changes Everything lives on my NAS. Group 1 gets rsync'd nightly to my virtual private server in another state. Groups 1 and 2 get rsnapshot'd daily to a) the same NAS (not a backup, but important for quick recovery from "oh shit" accidental changes or deletions) and a server at my parents' house (in a third state). Snapshots live for about thirty days. I also do offline tar backups to LTO6 every month. These are mostly stored off-site. They never get erased. Group 3 exists in Glacier Deep Archive and on two sets of LTO6s, stored in two different locations. So, yeah, it's a convoluted system, but I'll likely never lose data. And if something takes out my house, my parents' house, and the location of my VPS, I'll probably be dead or won't care. Currently considering upgrading to LTO9 and just making a full offline backup of everything every month. I have an Android phone, but don't use it for pictures (at least not that I care about) or anything else that requires backups, so I don't back it up at all.

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praetorfenix@reddit

MacBook Pro: Time Machine backup to a drive at work and a second at home.

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LetMeAskPls@reddit

Everything in DropBox to the cloud - any sensitive info in a bitlocker encrypted VHD that I mount to add/modify. Local disk and profile backups to 2nd HDD on laptop every few days (Macrium Reflect) Manually connect 2 separate USB drives and using a utility (Bvckup Pro) do file level copies ever few weeks. This tool moves modified files to a "archive" before replacing them.

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nova_rock@reddit

I have some account-cloud automatically connected things on devices, also use my home Synology to backup things to as well.

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Zedilt@reddit

Everything syncs to OneDrive, OneDrive syncs to my NAS.

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archiekane@reddit

PCs and phones (syncthing) to NAS. Main PC then uses Restic to take a real backup of the NAS to B2. Fully automated, tested occasionally and usually when it's a scream test (the wife screaming at me that she deleted something X many months back). No issues over the past 3 years. I used Borg originally, but didn't like the extra hoop of using rclone, Restic fixes that issue.

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k0rbiz@reddit

3-2-1 with StorageCraft and Backblaze.

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pdp10@reddit

Full-Disk Encrypted, offline, rotated spinning drives. Windows users may be interested in [LibreCrypt](https://t-d-k.github.io/LibreCrypt/), an implementation of LUKS (Linux's native FDE) for Windows.

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RestartRebootRetire@reddit

Important personal stuff on 1TB OneDrive with some folders secured by Cryptomator. Locally I keep two copies of stuff on two separate drives. What I still need to do is do a sync to an encrypted 2TB USB drive in case my locals get burned or encrypted by malware.

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Railroadfighter@reddit

Kinda old school. I store everything Windows on my local server and use Samsung smart switch on windows to make backups of my phone to the server whenever theres important change or photos taken. The Server makes daily Veeam Backups to a secondary hard drive and weekly backups to rotating external hard drives that I store at my girlfriends place 2 hours away.

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Art_Vand_Throw001@reddit

I use to use Carbonite for many years even had two successful restores but now have switched to iDrive because of the interface.

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skrillex_sk2@reddit

I don't have a backup of anything. Photos are on Google photos. That's it.

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vawlk@reddit

I have backblaze and it backs up the folders I select to their system. Thats it. i don't backup devices because I don't have a need to do it.

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superadmin_1@reddit

I have a 4TB NAS at home + google cloud data (photos and data)

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Nightflier101BL@reddit

Macbook has all my important data on it…. Time Machine backups, backups to two external USB drives, uploads to Wasabi.

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cmwg@reddit

3-2-1-1-0

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Immrsbdud@reddit (OP)

I'm familiar with 3-2-1, what is the extra 1 and 0 referring to? Apologies for the ignorance.

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cmwg@reddit

https://community.veeam.com/blogs-and-podcasts-57/3-2-1-1-0-golden-backup-rule-569

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malikto44@reddit

The additional 1 means an offline backup. The 0 means zero errors, and zero tolerance for errors. This means having a backup system that can verify backups on the checksum/CRC level.

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Immrsbdud@reddit (OP)

Cool thanks for the info.

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xstrex@reddit

All client systems get backed up locally to NAS, iPhone/iPad get backed up to iCloud. All documents, photos, and critical data on the NAS gets backed up nightly to backblaze. All critical media (music mostly) gets backed up locally to an external drive, monthly.

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hihcadore@reddit

OneDrive Then I have an internal HHD that I robocopy certain important folders into. Like my desktop, downloads, documents, VM HDs, a personal document file. I do this bi-weekly and keep the backups for 3 months then purge them. The script is set to run through task manager.

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neckbeard404@reddit

Everything i care is some how synced to the cloud i can kill any device PC included and not have an issue.

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thedatagolem@reddit

I only backup files. I don't own any software that I cannot simply download again, so I don't need to back that up. I save a text file with my OS license (Win 11 Pro) in case I need to reinstall. I use OneDrive for everything.

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jack_hudson2001@reddit

nas and usb drive

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oshunman@reddit

I just put everything important to me on OneDrive. As much as I hate Microsoft, it's pretty convenient and cheap for 1tb plus Office. (The mobile app for OneDrive kinda blows though) Some stuff is on my Google Drive too, just in case. If I lost every piece of tech I own in a fire, I wouldn't really lose any important data.

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