cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/6846019
I should really start doing regular backups again, do the 3-2-1 backup strategy again, and organize my backups but there’s so many files and stuff on my devices and external drives that it’s overwhelming and I don’t know how to properly sort it. ADHD kicks my ass too and I know that it takes a while to backup and that means my computer needs to idle so it can get done faster and doesn’t slow my computer down.
Also, I’m struggling with cloud backups too. Google Drive and OneDrive often had errors in the middle of uploading and I’m hesitant to spend money on a cloud service. And doesn’t Backblaze need you to have your device connected at least once every 30 days or your data will be deleted or something? I have ADHD and I can’t guarantee I’ll be on top of that. And do I upload image backups to these servers? Is that even possible? What about video game backups and other large files? Or all the videos I have? Aren’t these cloud services really slow as well? I feel like I’ll end up having the same problem…I could use zip files, but I keep worrying something will get removed in the middle of it.
And how do I check backups? I can’t reasonably check every single file I’ve ever made.
I don’t know how to handle all of this. I mainly use FreeFileSync for copying drives over with anything being overwritten just being moved to a Revisions folder. I also sometimes use Macrium Reflect for image backups, but the free version is being retired… I tried Veeam once but it didn’t backup the AppData folder when I tried doing a file level backup about a year ago.
I have a Mac and a Windows computer by the way. I do want to check out Linux someday though.
I don’t know if I can do a NAS either. I don’t think I have an extra computer lying around and I’m a college student who needs to travel from home to my college campus. And I don’t have a lot of room on my bedroom desk…And I hate how backups often prevent me from using one of my computers.
For Mac my backup system is a big Time Machine hard drive for local backup plus Backblaze for offsite backup. Backblaze personal backup is automatic, it just backs up most things on your computer. It doesn’t do everything, skipping things like Applications and system files, but those are recoverable other ways than from offsite backup. Backblaze needs to see your computer once every 6 months, and any external hard drives you’re backing up every 30 days. The initial backup can be a bit slow, but limited by your upload speed (mine was in progress for ~1 month until I upgraded my internet to fiber and it finished overnight) but after that it only uploads deltas saving on time and bandwidth. For me, between Time Machine and Backblaze I have enough piece of mind to not really worry about the backups.
Yes, exactly. You can also schedule your backups to take place overnight. Once you have software doing it for you, it can be pretty out-of-sight-out-of-mind.
As mentioned above, mark certain things like software that can be reacquired to be omitted from online backup to save bandwidth. No reason to exclude software on Mac from your local backups, as that can save a lot of time in case of a complete loss due to hardware failure, theft, etc.
I have ADHD so this is the part that concerns me the most.
I’m also a bit worried about the time it’ll take. Especially since I have quite a bit of stuff to back up and I don’t want to have my computer and drives running for days, and I don’t want to feel like I can’t use my computer in that time period.