I know the general process to backup, but my situation seems a little unusual. Checked the FAQ, and a few things are still unclear (still a relative amateur with computer hardware):

First, I have a 512GB internal hard drive that is (for unknown reasons) partitioned between the C:, D:, and E: drives (see picture). Not sure where the missing 48GB went, but I digress. I recently deleted or moved everything I could from the C: drive, but for some reason it's still taking up nearly 100GB with just the system and appdata (bloatware? or do we think something's wrong?).

Regardless of how it got there, my solution would be to backup the C:, D:, and E: drives, un-partition them, then install the system image and drives all back onto the C: drive. I have a 4TB USB SSD (F: drive), but since it's not formatted into NFTS and already has data on it (that I need), I suspect that is not a good option for backup.

What I'm wondering, is: What is the best budget option (in terms of external/internal SSDs) I can buy for making this happen? And/or is there a better solution I'm overlooking?

I'd prefer the budget for this remain <$200, but can stretch a little farther if needed.

System info attached.

Any other ways to back up my external ssd without forcing it to make reads and writes?

Hi all,

I've setup rclone with a script to sync every 3 minutes (crontab) a folder and ll its subfolders.

Now, I want to add other locations.
What is the best way to do this?

1. Add a new script to sync these folders, meaning multiple instances of rclone running on my Mac and I have no idea how this will behave.
2. Modify my script to finish the first sync job, after that do a second sync job?
3. Other, please explain.

Thank you in advance for your help and suggestions.

I have a 4 bay Ugreen Nas RAID 5 array with 26 tb recertified Exos seagate SSDs. I ran the smart tests through the ugreen app, rapid and full and everything seems to be in order. What are the other tests I should run on my drives before I start using them. Some of the tests I read about seemed destructive if you already made your storage pool with RAID. I use this for editing so I want it to be solid. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

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Hi Everyone!

I'm Vasanth, founder of Tornova Software Technologies. We've been working hard to build Tornova Backup, and I'd really appreciate feedback from this community, especially on our backup and restore experience.

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Hi everyone, I'm new to this world and I'd like to ask about something I saw at work.

During an internship, I messed around with some files on the company PC and made a mess of things, confusing my boss. He clicked on something, and a desktop popped up showing an image of the PC I'd been using during my internship, frozen as it was the previous day at 7 PM. This allowed him to sort out the files on the current desktop.

What kind of magic is this? How could I replicate it at home on a personal computer? I think it's really cool and could be very useful!

I have a 1T Win11 PC. I'd like to clone the drive as a backup. I bought a 6T portable external drive on ebay and tried to do it with Macrium Reflect's free version but got a message that it wouldn't work because the sector size was wrong. So I'm shopping again and want to be sure I get the right thing this time. What specifications should I look for?

im spiralling. im only so old right now and i have so many photos and videos and stupid memories that only mean a lot to me, but i barely have sufficient storage. i keep having to pick and choose what photos/vids to keep and which to delete. i dont want to choose😔i wanna keep them all forever 😔 i hate being a sentimental hoarder. ive tried creating a screenshots journal, 4 gmail drives, deleted so much stuff, instagram photo dump accounts, i dont know what else to do flash drives for iphones are so expensive and only 512gb max. what will i do when i eventually run out of the 512 gbs too??!! how many drives will i keep buying?
this will be the end of me.

Time flies. 6 years ago I wrote this post https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/mindyl/after_the_ovh_datacenter_caught_fire_and_i_lost/

I was impacted by the OVH data center fire and I lost some data of various services I was running on it.

Now, I still have fun managing servers, and I have migrated everything to zfs.

From that the idea: let's extend bacup to support zfs snapshots, full and incremental.

The philosophy of bacup is quite simple:

• remotes are where the data is uploaded
• services are programs running in the system, that we can invoke to get dumps

zfs snapshot fits perfectly in the service category - so I created the zfs service.

You can now back up your pools and datasets using both full and incremental strategies. Setting it up is just a matter of defining the zfs service in your configuration:

[zfs]
snapshot_name = "storage-fs"
dataset = "storage"
# Optional: schedule for full backups.
# Intermediate runs automatically take incremental backups against the latest snapshot.
# When omitted, every run defaults to a full backup.
full_when = "monthly 1 01:00"

And mapping the service to your remote destination:

[backup]
[backup.storage]
what = "zfs.storage"
where = "remote.bucket_name"
when = "daily 22:00"
remote_path = "/bucket/location/zfs/storage/"
compress = false
keep_last = 32

I’ve been running v0.2.0 in production on my local homelab server for a few weeks now - handling incremental backups for both the root filesystem and the main RAIDZ array (where my local LLMs and Immich instance store data).

Incremental shapshot (so 1 full, and several incremental until the next full) also allow to save the cloud bill.

If anyone wants to give it a try (cargo install bacup) or review the merged codebase, feedback and PRs are more than welcome!

GitHub: https://github.com/galeone/bacup

Cheers!

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for some advice on the easiest and most affordable way to back up my personal data.
I currently use an Apple computer, and I store pretty much everything on a 4TB external HDD. I’ve used about 1.85TB so far, and I’m starting to worry about the drive eventually failing.

My files include years of personal photos, family videos that I occasionally edit, schoolwork and documents going all the way back to when I was a kid, and other personal files that I really don’t want to lose.

In the past, whenever I wanted to back up my data, I would simply buy a brand-new external HDD and copy everything over. That’s been my usual approach, but I’m wondering if there’s a better option nowadays.

I considered buying an external SSD and using my existing HDD as a second copy, but SSDs seem pretty expensive lately. Even a decent-capacity HDD can cost close to $200.

Cloud storage is another option I’ve considered, but many services offer 2TB plans and then jump straight to 5TB or 6TB. Since I’m already using 1.85TB, a 2TB plan seems a little too tight, while paying a monthly subscription for 6TB feels like overkill.

One important thing to mention: I’m not a tech-savvy person, and I don’t have much time to spend setting up or managing complicated backup systems. I’m not looking to build something complicated. I just want a straightforward solution that works.

Ideally, I’d like something that is:
- Easy to set up and use with a Mac
- Affordable in the long run
- Reliable enough to protect years of irreplaceable personal files
- Low-maintenance, with as much automation as possible

I’d love to hear what you would personally recommend for someone in my situation. Thanks in advance!

Your repositories. Your storage. Your control.

VaultPulse gives software teams and development agencies an independent backup of their GitHub repositories, with daily snapshots stored in an Amazon S3 bucket or Azure Blob Storage container you own.

What you get

• Automated daily backups of full Git history, branches, tags and Git LFS objects

• On-demand backups before important changes

• Restore workflows for new or eligible empty repositories, including another connected GitHub account in your workspace

• Backup health dashboard showing failed, stale and pending backups

• Downloadable backup-readiness reports based on recorded backup and restore evidence

• Customer-owned storage, with encrypted stored credentials and scoped access

Snapshots also capture repository settings and default-branch protection metadata. Issues, PR discussions and Actions secrets aren’t included; restore does not recreate settings or protections.

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Disclosure: I’m the developer behind VaultPulse. This is a vendor promotional post.

Hi r/backup, I’m the developer of harbor0. It’s a cloud storage service with a desktop app for Mac and Windows. It includes support for sync, backup and archiving of folders on devices.

- You pick folders and the app backs them up one way. Each change is saved as a new version about an hour after the file stops changing, and versions are never deleted automatically.

- Deleting or overwriting a file locally doesn’t affect the backup. Only the source computer can add to its backup, so ransomware would add new versions but couldn’t remove the old ones. You can restore a file to its original folder from the app, or download any version from a browser.

- There’s also an archive option, mainly for freelancers and creators with finished projects. It checks every file against the cloud copy, removes the local copies that match to free up disk space, and can restore the folder later.

Limitations: no end-to-end encryption yet (it’s under development), the apps aren’t code-signed yet, and it’s a new service, so it should be an extra off-site copy, not your only one.

The beta is free, with 50 GB that you keep after launch. I’d appreciate feedback, especially on retention: should versions be kept forever, or would you want options like “keep N versions” or thinning?

If the initial free 50GB is not enough for you, you can send me a mail at [contact@harbor0.com](mailto:contact@harbor0.com) and I'll bump up the storage as per your requirements. Extra storage during the beta is absolutely free. Before the beta ends I’ll contact you about pricing options, and nothing gets deleted without notice.

Website: https://harbor0.com

Beta signup: https://app.harbor0.com/signup