Simplifying My Backup Strategy:

It's been a while since I posted here. Today I wanted to share some changes I've made to my backup and archiving strategies. Back in my consulting days, I relied on a NAS storage system, specifically a Netgear Stora. It had some fantastic automatic backup features, making it easy to keep duplicates of anything sent to it. It also allowed me to sync folders from each computer, ensuring only recent files were sent to the NAS. It was simple and reliable.

Fast forward to today, and retirement has brought about a shift in my storage needs. I no longer need to hold on to large amounts of client data. Also thanks to the relentless upgrades in Windows that unfortunately led to the demise of my previous backup Stora software, I can no longer use that NAS.

Rather than buy a New NAS system, I realised the bulk of my long-term storage is dedicated to my photography and art projects, totalling around 6 gigabytes. After spending a month decluttering duplicates and obvious duds, I repurposed older USB external drives no longer needed for client data for my photo archive. In addition to the current “originals on spinning discs connected to my main computer, and available across my LAN, I've organized them into three sets: one as a master archive in my office, and two duplicate sets rotated, with one stored off-site for added security. The rotation has been roughly monthly

Without a functioning NAS, I've reverted to a more manual approach, reminiscent of the magnetic tape days. I've set up a small, manually triggered incremental backup stream onto my locally held external archive sets.

Here's the breakdown of my new system:

1. I've allocated five folders with appropriate week names.
2. I manually perform the incremental backup at the end of each week.
3. At the end of the first week, I store all files that have changed since the beginning of the month in the respective weekly folder.
4. At the end of the second week, I copy all files changed since the beginning of the month, extending my increments back to the start of the month. I don't worry about overlapping days between months; those files go into the appropriate week's data set.
5. In months with only four weeks, I also copy the entire increment into week five, ensuring it contains the full month of new and changed files.
6. At the beginning of the next month, I clear out the first four weekly folders but keep week five, which now holds the backup of the previous month.

This system gives me a two-month window to recover files. While it might not be perfect, it's easy to manage and ensures the job gets done. Although I'm not backed up to the minute, the simplicity and ease of execution make it a viable solution for my needs. Plus, for anything super important, I can always make an additional copy to the current increment folder. Easy and quick!

I used ChatGPT to help proofread my typos etc, and simplify the text, most of which it did well BUT it clearly didn't understand my process and made up some stuff, so I've used the good bits, and corrected or deleted the rubbish

Backtober

I recently listened to a one of Brooks Jensen's "Here's a Thought" short daily podcasts called backtober  Its about how he uses October each year to thoroughly review his digital back up and archives. He might be a bit obsessive, replacing any spinning hard drive older than 3 years, never less it has made me realize I need to totally re-evaluate my situation.

I have not found a good solution to replacing my little NAS unit. So automatic daily backups are not being made anymore!

1. Most of my archiving is now on external (spinning disk) hard drives, and unfortunately, I have experienced 4 of these drives crashing in the past decade. There were duplicates of these so I didn't actually lose anything, Duplicates were on another hard drive (ie same format/technology)
2. I do have archives up to 2010 on CD & DVD, They take up lots of space and I haven't touched them in years.
3. I have a fairly complete "extra" archive on a larger old hard disk that I can connect into my "air gapped" linux archive. When recently accessed one of these older disks started reporting errors (and will have to be replaced, but I'm out of old computer drives!)
4. I haven't evaluated the FreeNAS software yet!

It's October so I need to get onto these now, I like the idea of a full review yearly rather than my irregular monthly attentions (which has been overlooked a few times this year anyway).