I like the idea of having my files backed up online, but the 500MB of RAM required by dropbox, or nextcloud, seems excessive.

Assuming I have a web host that allows ftp and/or rsync, I wonder if could do something like setup cron to sync certain files every 15 minutes, or so.

I suspect, this would would take a lot less RAM and CPU, than what is required by dropbox or nextcloud.

I think lftp can be used to sync files. I wonder how much RAM/CPU would be used?

Judging from this documentation, it seems that rsync would be fairly efficient as well.

https://rsync.samba.org/FAQ.html

Any thoughts appreciated. Thanks in advance.

backed up online scares me. But my upload speed has always sucked and my download speed while better than a decade ago is nothing to brag about. And then there's security aspects and legal aspects. You have plausible deniability when it's on a thing in your house and you're not the only one living there. A lot less so when it's on a 3rd parties computer and they have your cc and other personal identifying credentials.

I do my backups / syncing by external drives locally. When I'm lazy, computer to computer via netcat. Rarely I'll setup an NFS share.

I'll also rarely rsync my thumb drives to a much bigger drive. And wipe them clean for other purposes.

> I do my backups / syncing by external drives locally

If there is a break-in, or a fire, or something, locally; you would lose everything.

Also, if you are away from your computer, there is no way to reach your files.

The only online service that looks like it has potential from my perspective would be Tarsnap. I definitely would not trust the other "cloud" storage providers or their client software.

Otherwise you can get quite far by rotating through enrypted multi-terabyte USB drives and always keeping one or two off site.

There's this Linux application that can connect to dozens of cloud storage services... name eludes me atm... probably more lightweight than dropbox.

I do both to my web server for critical files as well as to my local file server. For both I use rsync -aviS with output to a date_named_log.txt file. I also use the ssh rsa token along with config files to make both backups easier. see my sig for those details.

Got it: https://rclone.org/

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Rclone looks interesting. Thank you.

If there's a fire or break in, I have bigger issues than my "data".

You can setup various ways to access your files remotely. Without needing a cloud service. Granted limited by your home network speed.

Locally doesn't always mean in only one location. Once a year make a mass backup, wrap that up in plastic and duct tape it to hell and back, stick it in a water proof box, and bury it somewhere in the yard. Fireproof at least. And would require "effort" by said break in, probably more effort and time than most are willing to do. Assuming that they know that buried three feet down and under that 100lbs rock is "data".

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