This is your occasional backup reminder - if you haven’t yet, go start setting up backups of any kind.
If you think you don’t need backups, delete everything you have on the device you’re using right now.
If that seems like a bad idea then you need backups.
@NanoRaptor I did and now kopia keeps stalling on backups for days at a time :/
Oct 17, 2026, 9:29 PM@NanoRaptor how do I backup you?
@efi I am secretly already a dolly the sheep.
Oct 17, 2026, 9:45 PM@NanoRaptor the secret come out does dana is sheep?
@NanoRaptor Adding: If you think you already have backups, delete everything on the device you have right now.
If that idea worries you, then you need better backups.
(I need better backups)
@NanoRaptor *the "delete everything" part probably doesn't apply to work-issued devices even if you think it's useless junk.
**especially if the device in question is a shared file server
@NanoRaptor I like to imagine a bunch of nerds reading your post from a thin client cackling to themselves.
@NanoRaptor I have many times over more data on my desktop than I do storage
@NanoRaptor And no I'm not paying for cloud storage or buying more
@NanoRaptor Then test restoring them. Stephen Tweedie used to say there were 3 types of people
- People who had never lost all their data, and made no backups
- People who had lost all their data, and made backups
- People who had failed to restore a backup and checked their backups work
@NanoRaptor
ty im very bad at backup i will strive to improve
Oct 17, 2026, 10:01 PM@NanoRaptor The rule is, any time you see a backup post, you have to check your backups!
(Some spot checks on mine look good. An occasional full restore is a great idea, too!)
Thank you!
I've never - will never - use "cloud" storage as it's just someone else's server. Always used an external hard drive.
Doing back up now, cheers!
@kaffando @NanoRaptor use both. That external hard drive will be just as destroyed as the original if there's a house fire.
@rogerlipscombe @kaffando I have a few kinds. backup my desktop to the cloud, and to my NAS as a temp backup but then a real backup of the whole NAS to one of a pair of external HDs. One of which I take to a different location each time I swap the other in.
@rogerlipscombe @kaffando @NanoRaptor It would have to be quite a _big_ fire; at any point one of mine is 2km away from my house.
@NanoRaptor Indeed, make your own back-ups (try Duplicati). Of course major big tech companies and TLA organisatie have your data backed-up, but getting them to fork it over really puts a dent in your TTR. 😉
But also remember the first rule of Italian driving: "What's-a behind me is not important!" - Franco, The Gumball Rally
@NanoRaptor just want to share for those following your post. my go to backup program is Borg backup. if you want a friendly gui there is a great program called vorta.
if you struggle to keep backups up to date and optimise diskspace highly recommend.
@NanoRaptor Does the default forced, cloud-only Onedrive for storage count as backup? :neocat_woozy:
@catsalad @NanoRaptor NO
<reaches for the cat-spritzer>
@catsalad @NanoRaptor No. If you can erase things from it from the machine it's supposed to be serving as a backup for, then it's not a backup. It's at best a little bit of redundancy.
I'm going to start this story with "I didn't lose any data, but..."
I used to have a little 4 bay NAS box with a little 120W DC power supply, mini-ITX board, etc. Came home one day and it was off. I was like "that's weird" and pressed the power button, which did nothing. Popped the drives out, power button again, and hey, it turned on!
I was like "okay, that's probably not good, but it's a RAID5 array and I can lose a drive if worse comes to worst", so I took them to my home theater PC, which was built from random scrap components, including a 750W PSU. (You might be able to see where this is going.) Popped off the top, connected up the drives, and then hit the power button, at which point a THREE INCH FLAME shot off of one of the drive controller boards. You have never seen someone dive for a power cable that quickly before, but man, I got to it fast.
Turns out one of the drives had developed a short, and the 120W supply was current limiting and shutting down. The 750W was like "I got you bro" and just SLAMMED power into the short until it blew up.
Anyways, this is why I'm homicidal about backups now. I even keep a drive in my safety deposit box at the bank, because you just never know.
Oct 17, 2026, 11:56 PM@NanoRaptor This sounds very fun actually, not a bad idea. It'd trick me into thinking I'm being productive by messing with a new system again!
Oct 18, 2026, 12:24 AM@NanoRaptor @Tapewolf Reminder - RAID is not a backup. Folks need to understand the difference between a backup and high availability. :)
@LeoBurr @NanoRaptor @Tapewolf as is not RAIS or V-equivalents, just do your due diligence and back-up + test restore your data.
@NanoRaptor seeing all these reactions, just try Duplicati. It is a free, open-source backup client that securely stores block-level deduplicated, encrypted, incremental, and compressed backups on cloud storage services and remote file servers.
And it facilitatates automagic restore tests.
@mickert @NanoRaptor "A user you’ve blocked has previously contributed to this repository."
Seems to be slopped.
@dalias @NanoRaptor ah that's sad. This used to be excellent. Which user is it? So that i can check the contribs.
@mickert @NanoRaptor Slop bots.
Oct 18, 2026, 12:51 AM@NanoRaptor@bitbang.social and be sure to verify and test your backups!!!
Oct 18, 2026, 12:56 AM@maddy @NanoRaptor beginner question: I make backups and make sure the files are readable, but the only way I can figure to test them as full backups is to try to restore my whole computer from empty, which, if it doesn't work, is not good. Has happened (not as a test but in a real failure case, I was unable to reinstall the OS). what logical step am I missing?
@iris @maddy @NanoRaptor
If you want to be really confident, you can restore your backup into a qemu or whatever VM. Simulate a total disaster recovery, but without the disaster.
Oct 18, 2026, 1:02 AM@silvermoon82@wandering.shop @iris@neuromatch.social @NanoRaptor@bitbang.social Also can't hurt to have backups using different tools (like Veeam Agent free in addition to Clonezilla, or whatever), or an 'if all else fails' backup with all your important files.
Oct 18, 2026, 1:04 AM@maddy @silvermoon82 @NanoRaptor both good tips, thanks!
@iris
> the only way I can figure to test them as full backups is to try to restore my whole computer from empty […] what logical step am I missing?
To test something safely typically implies redundancy: You have a spare/sacrificial whatever, that *is not used for anything else*, wipe it clean, and test on that. If the test demonstrates failure, you haven't lost the valuable one. In either case, wipe it clean for use testing next time.
In the case of testing backups, you bear the expense (money, time, storage, whatever) of a replica computer, as close to the real thing as you can make it. That's what you restore backup onto, and verify that the restore has actually brought back everything you backed up; then wipe it for the next time you need to test.
Look into “virtual machine” if you want to go down the rabbit hole.
Oct 18, 2026, 12:04 PM@bignose @NanoRaptor @maddy yeah, I don't think a spare entire computer is a reasonable ask for most people. shouldn't be what we expect when we say "test your backups".
I've worked with VMs before and that part I can try.
@iris @maddy @NanoRaptor This isn't an actionable answer, but ideally a backup system should have a way to output a list of pathnames and hashes extracted from the backup, so that you can compare against the live system to prove everything was there in the backup without needing temporary space to actually restore it all.
@NanoRaptor i set my photo and video backup to one and only google photos :bd10:
@NanoRaptor I have a backup in Finland (I am not in Finland).
@NanoRaptor I've lost enough stuff over the years to realise that most of it isn't worth as much as I thought.
+ turn on all backup auto saving in your ide. I have it keep hundreds of backups for edited source code. This costs approximately nothing.
+ use a filesystem that supports ~instant backup snapshots. Have it take one every 10 minutes or so.
+ don't use single storage devices, raid them. The only non redundant storage device in my homelab is the cluster head node which has a 4x raid0 nvme ssd for extreme perf. It gets a local snapshot every 15 minutes and to another device every night.
@aachrisg P S. Here an example of one fire that caused a lot of damage:
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/analysis/ovhcloud-fire-france-data-center/
@NanoRaptor ... and also TEST the backups you already have! Make sure whatever runs those backups is still working and that you can recover usable data!
Oct 18, 2026, 3:19 AM@NanoRaptor thank you for your (public) service (announcement).
@NanoRaptor It is incredibly nice to have backups when a multi-TB filesystem gets destroyed by a hard drive failure or a wrong-device dd job. Been there, had both, lost nothing but the time to write it all back and the cost of a replacement drive.
Off-site backups save your ass after a raid, burglary, or fire
@NanoRaptor
Also someone's cloud service is more suited to sharing files than being a backup.
@NanoRaptor the way you formulated that was quite convincing. I might steal that next time I try to talk about the need for backups.
@AndreasDavour Go for it - I'm sure I stole it from someone else at some point years ago too.
@NanoRaptor good advice. I might go a bit further and say actually do wipe or factory reset your devices, say once a year? It's a good way to test backups and practice recovery.
@NanoRaptor my backups are much much better than they were two weeks ago.
Nearly two weeks ago I lost 3 years of password database.....
Never again :)
@LovesTha @NanoRaptor And the "infosec professionals" 🤡 all want to force us to store passwords (or now passkeys) in locations that can't be backed up... 🤬
Oct 18, 2026, 10:33 AMOct 18, 2026, 10:33 AM
@NanoRaptor I would add that you need at least 2 backups because 2 is 1 and 1 is none. Also, a backup that you are not sure to be able to restore is not a backup. It’s junk on a disk
Oct 18, 2026, 11:55 AM@NanoRaptor The corollary to this: if you haven't restored from a backup, you don't know if you have a backup or just some stored bits.
@NanoRaptor Apple’s shift from files to hidden app-database makes backup/restore very difficult
@NanoRaptor
To pile up more advice, make sure your backups are hardware independent. The computer you use now is likely not for sale anymore.