654: Data Storage in 2022

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45

That’s what I would recommend. That covers you if there is a bug or some silent failure (as @rkaplan said), in TimeMachine.
In my previous Backup palooza system, I used multiple drives, software, etc. to provide redundant coverage of these possibilities. It was overkill, I think.

(Just thinking out loud, so feel free to ignore the rest of this if uniterested :slight_smile: )

Arq
  • Arq to backup my iMac Pro’s home folder and my large data drive (RAID-0 paired 2TiB SSDs) to:
    • An external drive every hour
    • My Synology NAS every three hours
    • My TrueNAS server once a week (it’s on a Dell T320, so basically a space heater, thus I only have it on for ~4hrs a week)
    • I have two shelf drives that I back up to every other month, one for odd months, one for even
    • Every two or three years, I retire a drive that I’m backing up to and put it away for long-term storage. (All physically here at my house, so not ideal in that regard.)
Carbon Copy Cloner
  • CCC backs up my iMac Pro ( not the data drive) to an attached 1TiB SSD.
Backblaze
  • I pay for 1-year retention
  • Backblaze backs up everything on my iMac Pro and the data drive.
  • Backblaze also backs up my girlfriend’s MBP.
iPad / iPhone
  • iPad backs up to my iMac Pro when I can get it to work, may go back to iCloud backup
  • iPhone backs up to iCloud
Manjaro Linux
  • Backs up to my Synology once a day
Not backed up
  • My MBP syncs some folders between my iMac Pro, NAS, and Linux server. Nothing unique on it, so I don’t back it up.
  • My TrueNAS doesn’t back up anywhere. Everything there is the same as my Synology NAS, save for the operating system itself. It also runs ZFS and has 8x 3TiB drives, so most failures are covered. For those still reading, TrueNAS is running in a QEMU VM on Ubuntu and works like a charm.

I put a lot of this in place to help ensure there were no setbacks when working on my PhD. I analyzed large datasets of EEG and fMRI data, which is why I bought the iMac Pro, external SSD for large file storage, etc. Depending on my next gig, I’ll revisit all this, perhaps paring it down some.

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