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timeshift with btrfs: am I doing it right?
(lemmy.kde.social)
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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Yep, you're doing it right... or at least that's how I do it as well, lol 😂.
A snapshot is exactly that, a snapshot. It doesn't take forever to create, like with rsync, it litelarly takes a second, even on very old rigs (775 or even older). It's basically a snapshot of what the current drive holds. If a file changes (gets added, removed, whatever), the snapshot grows cuz it needs to hold the older versions of the files (the ones saved at the time of the snapshot).
This might not be exactly how snapshots work in BTRFS, but this is what I gathered from using it with snapshots enabled. The older the snapshot, the larger the size of the snapshot (takes way more room cuz more changes have occured).
Also, it's wise to set up daily, weekly and monthly snapshots. I have it set up to hold 5 or 6 (can't really remember now) daily snapshots, 4 weekly and 2 montly. So basically, I can go back in time for a max of 2 months. I was thinking or raising the montly snapshots to 3 or 4, but I'm still not sure. Still, I wouldn't go lower than 2.
wouldn't this take a lot of disk space?
Nah, I got it set up on a P4 with a 20GB drive, takes about 2 or 3GB. As time progresses, older snapshots get deleted automatically by Timeshift 😉. So, say you got 4 daily set up, 4 weekly and 2 montly. Only the last 4 daily, 4 weekly and 2 monthly stay, the rest are deleted as new snapshots are created. That's the while point of having this setup, so you can go back in time, but you decide how long.
woah! this is amazing! thanks for the help!!!
NP, glad I could help 😉 👍.