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 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
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 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>
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, 12:51 AM@NanoRaptor@bitbang.social and be sure to verify and test your backups!!!
@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 :)
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
To pile up more advice, make sure your backups are hardware independent. The computer you use now is likely not for sale anymore.
@NanoRaptor And include in that the data other apps are ‘looking after’ for you. In their own proprietary format. That requires their app (and only their app) to access. And for both them and their servers to keep on liking you. And for their company to stay afloat.
If all of that seems likely, by all means never export your data to an open format — and then back it up.