Hi.

I have a 2TB SSD (full LUKS automatic partitioning) on my Desktop PC. I also have a 2TB HDD. What would be a good setup regarding backups? Should I clone the SSD to the HDD ever so often? Of just sync my SSD home folder files to the HDD? I'd want the 2nd drive to also be encrypted.

What would you do?

Thanks.

Personally, I just just backup any 'data' files and \home . Reinstalling an OS doesn't take that long, if ever needed, with the bonus of a nice clean install. But... data (photos, cad drawings, etc.) is not easily replaced and by saving the /home folders you same all your personal settings and data files. I'd also suggest an external backup drive too. This is necessary if 'both' your internal drives get corrupted for some reason (power supply zapps the drives for example). I actually keep a copy off site as well in the case of theft/fire etc. This is only a yearly backup, but at least not 'all' files will be missing if I had to restore. Bottom line, just backup data and \home folders is my suggestion.

Oh, and I don't use encryption. Nothing on my systems that are military/NSA/CIA class information. Only information that needs encryption are encrypted... Passwords and such. Basic 'selective' encryption so to speak.

1 members found this post helpful.

So many ways to use a backup. The one you choose is the one you have trusted and tested usually.

To clone it you'd have to boot to some clone OS, you don't want to clone it live usually. I do that with windows a lot. I save to some file set over making a duplicate drive usually.

One can save off just important data. That can be done manually or automatically.

1 members found this post helpful.

There is no "good setup" with that. Me, I would rsync /home as needed.

As noted above, having internal disks as your only backup is sub-optimal. As is the fact that encryption doesn't help once the container is unlocked - your data are then exposed to anyone who can access the machine. So there's no point not having both disks unlocked.

Note I am not recommending this setup.

Perhaps Timeshift would be a good solution?

Because I'm lazy about removing my backup disk, and in fact use it too much I bought a backup/backup disk which remains offline. I should at least go offline to do update the offline disk, but ultimately the worst they could do to me is hack someone else. I don't care.

Any backup is better than none.

I have a disk setup similar to yours. I spread everything equally across both drives for maximum speed. Then I back up both drives to one USB hard drive that I keep in my desk and a second USB drive that I keep in my detached garage. This has me backed up for fire and theft as well as the usual software and hardware failures. When my house burned down 5 years ago I lost no data. Encryption prevents a thief from being able to use your data but encryption presents problems (not insurmountable) when you try to restore to a brand new machine which replaces a burned out shell.

The backups to external drives run faster (after the first backup run) if you sync the files instead of cloning the drives.

1 members found this post helpful.

Jack Schofield: "Data doesn't really exist unless you have at least two copies of it." – Schofield's Second Law of Computing (2008)

That's a nice setup there!

As things are, I backup to 2 external HDDs on varying dates. I think I'll just use my spare internal drives for testing out other distros.