47
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by 0_0j@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

sudo's Hall of pain

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Atemu@lemmy.ml 19 points 7 months ago

Am I the only one around here who does backups?

[-] brokenlcd@feddit.it 20 points 7 months ago

Unfortunately to do backups i need the money to buy a drive to do backups on; most of my pcs are literally made out of scrap parts from broken machines.

[-] Atemu@lemmy.ml 8 points 7 months ago

I use scrapped drives for my cold backups, you can make it work.

Though in case of extreme financial inability, I'd make an exception to the "no backup, no pity" rule ;)

[-] brokenlcd@feddit.it 1 points 7 months ago

I'm trying to do that; but all of the newer drives i have are being used in machines, while the ones that arent connected to anything are old 80gb ide drives, so they aren't really practical to backup 1tb of data on.

For the most part i prevented myself from doing the same mistake again by adding a 1gb swap partition at the beginning of the disk, so it doesn't immediatly kill the partition if i mess up again.

[-] Atemu@lemmy.ml 0 points 7 months ago

I’m trying to do that; but all of the newer drives i have are being used in machines, while the ones that arent connected to anything are old 80gb ide drives, so they aren’t really practical to backup 1tb of data on.

It's possible to make that work; through discipline and mechanism.

You'd need like 12 of them but if you'd carve your data into <80GB chunks, you could store every chunk onto a separate scrap drive and thereby back up 1TB of data.

Individual files >80GB are a bit more tricky but can also be handled by splitting them into parts.

What such a system requires is rigorous documentation where stuff is; an index. I use git-annex for this purpose which comes with many mechanisms to aid this sort of setup but it's quite a beast in terms of complexity. You could do every important thing it does manually without unreasonable effort through discipline.

For the most part i prevented myself from doing the same mistake again by adding a 1gb swap partition at the beginning of the disk, so it doesn’t immediatly kill the partition if i mess up again.

Another good practice is to attempt any changes on a test model. You'd create a sparse test image (truncate -s 1TB disk.img), mount via loopback and apply the same partition and filesystem layout that your actual disk has. Then you first attempt any changes you plan to do on that loopback device and then verify its filesystems still work.

[-] Sethayy@sh.itjust.works 0 points 7 months ago

Or mount it in RAID0/whatever the zfs equivalent is.

The downside over one disk is many have more possible points of failed, taking out the whole array - so ideally another RAID would be best

[-] Atemu@lemmy.ml 0 points 7 months ago

That would require all of those disks to be connected at once which is a logistical nightmare. It would be hard with modern drives already but also consider that we're talking IDE drives here; it's hard enough to connect one of them to a modern system, let alone 12 simultaneously.

With an Index, you also gain the ability to lose and restore partial data. With a RAID array it's all or nothing; requiring wasting a bunch of space for being able to restore everything at once. Using an index, you can simply check which data was lost and prepare another copy of that data on a spare drive.

[-] Sethayy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 months ago

I'm just talking prebuilt solutions here, but how would you use an index'd storage base if the drives weren't connected? Sounds like that's an issue regardless

[-] Atemu@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago

Note that all of this is in the context of backups; duplicates for the purpose of restoring the originals in case something happens to them. Though it is at least possible to use an index cold storage system like what I describe for more frequent access, I would find that very inconvenient for "hot" data.

how would you use an index’d storage base if the drives weren’t connected

You take a look at your index where the data you need is located, connect to that singular location (i.e. plug in a drive) and then copy it into the place it went missing from.

The difference is that, with an Index, you gain granularity. If you only need file A, you don't need to connect all 12 backup drives, just the one that has file A on it.

[-] brokenlcd@feddit.it 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

The problem is that i didn't mean to write to the hdd, but to a usb stick; i typed the wrong letter out of habit from the old pc.

As for the hard drives, I'm already trying to do that, for bigger files i just break them up with split. I'm just waiting until i have enough disks to do that.

[-] Atemu@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago

The problem is that i didn’t mean to write to the hdd, but to a usb stick; i typed the wrong letter out of habit from the old pc.

For that issue, I recommend never using unstable device names and always using /dev/disk/by-id/.

As for the hard drives, I’m already trying to do that, for bigger files i just break them up with split. I’m just waiting until i have enough disks to do that.

I'd highly recommend to start backing up the most important data ASAP rather than waiting to be able to back up all data.

[-] billgamesh@lemmy.ml 4 points 7 months ago

I'm in a similar boat, but tend to mirror my important files across a lot of my drives. Also, whenever I move hard drives computer to computer, I first look at the drive and copy everything I don't wanna lose, just in case.. Basically, learned to be careful the hard way a few times lol

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 7 months ago

You can buy (or get) cheap 1tb ssds or bigger 2tb hdds for sub 100€ where I am from.
Pairing that with extreme conpression from veeam, not installing all programs in C:\ (or whatever system directory for linux) and either doing volume or file level backups should give you plenty of space to do those.

[-] Sethayy@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 months ago

Linux its just / then from there you can mount other drives at whatever directory you want

But also 100€ ain't all too cheap for some of us

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 7 months ago

Linux its just / then from there you can mount other drives at whatever directory you want

I know root / exists but I didn't know a good analog to C:. Thank you though as some other members might not know it yet :)

But also 100€ ain't all too cheap for some of us

Certainly. But nowadays even reputable brands bring out >1TB SSD/HDDs for little money.
They should suffice for backup purposes.
If the money is that tight when even a dedicated drive + backupsoftware won't fit then you can only bridge the time until then with a USB drive or something else with a high enough capacity.
And any (working) backup is better than none.

[-] null@slrpnk.net 5 points 7 months ago

I have plenty of non-critical Linux ISOs that I don't back up (because that'd be like 12 TB).

But I'd still be pissed if I accidentally wiped them.

[-] bushvin@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
47 points (94.3% liked)

Asklemmy

43728 readers
1082 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS