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RAID is not a backup: the 3-2-1 rule, honestly (chartmann1590.github.io)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/homelab@lemmy.ml
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What actually counts as a copy under the 3-2-1 rule, why a RAID mirror or a snapshot only protects against one kind of failure, and the one-page inventory that exposes the gaps.

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Disclosure: this is my own article (Charles Hartmann, Homelab the Right Way). Written with AI help and edited by me; the setup described is mine.

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[–] 23 points 2 days ago (11 children)

I feel like nothing I do is "right".

Also, I feel like I can't afford to back things up. Not with the prices of hardware and cloud storage.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 days ago (5 children)

    Worth checking out borgbase (which supports restic, not only borg) and hetzber backup solutions. There’s also backblaze if your cool with American servers, or easy backup if you want s3 style storage.

    Prices are still relatively affordable.

    You also don’t have to back up everything. I back up my configuration and documents only.

    It’s better to do backups imperfectly than not at all.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    You also don’t have to back up everything. I back up my configuration and documents only.

    Yeah I mean I have to go this way. My home server is 38 tb and I'm about 60% on that. Alot of it is archival stuff I know better data hoarders than I are keeping on their stacks.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (1 child)

    That is a lot of data, I’m jealous. I want that much storage space.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago

    Yeah I guess it can appear that way.

    Lets just put it this way though, for one work project, I expect to have to work through ~250 tb of data. We won't keep it all on disk at once, but over the course of the next year, that was what we spitballed needs to get processed. The system once finished will have to throughput almost a TB a week (which imo, is nothing).

    THen in terms of my own storage and what that is. Its some full disk image backups of old machines where I'm lazy and haven't bothered to clean/ winnow it down to what I really need. Then its two google drive backups of a bout a tb a piece. Then I've got a reddit archive of all posts and commens. Thats a couple ter.

    Then I have all of the epstien files backed up. The original releases as they came down. Including the redaction mistakes they made. Thats a bunch.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 days ago (3 children)

    Marketplace is your friend. 7th gen intel computers can be found for cheap because Windows doesn't support them anymore. Wipe the boot disk, install OMV and done. Now the hard part is of course hard disks. Still scour the used market but at least OMV will let you mismatch disk sizes with SnapRAID+MergerFS as long as you aren't using ZFS and the parity drive is the same or bigger than the largest data drive.

    For most people you don't need to go extremely huge.

    Then just set a nightly rsync.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    I dont engage with corporate social media.

    And craigslist is busted.

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    • [–] 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    But it feeeeels like a backup, and isn't that what really matters? In my setup I have 3 drives (2x 8Tb, 1x 14 Tb) and I finally have the opportunity to do some consolidation and not just have 3 single drives plugged into a server. Zfs, raid , a dedicated backup drive, but I'm still figuring out what the layout should be.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago* (1 child)

    Put the two 8tb in a mirrored raid so if one fails you keep your data. Use the 14tb as a backup that is left unplugged for longevity.

    That would be my recommendation which is similar to what I have (4 x 6 tb for twelve gigs of redundant storage) and a couple of 8tb drives I keep for occasional (monthly or so) archival backup.

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