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submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by NekoKoneko@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

I have a 56 TB local Unraid NAS that is parity protected against single drive failure, and while I think a single drive failing and being parity recovered covers data loss 95% of the time, I'm always concerned about two drives failing or a site-/system-wide disaster that takes out the whole NAS.

For other larger local hosters who are smarter and more prepared, what do you do? Do you sync it off site? How do you deal with cost and bandwidth needs if so? What other backup strategies do you use?

(Sorry if this standard scenario has been discussed - searching didn't turn up anything.)

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[-] trk@aussie.zone 3 points 6 months ago

I have a 120TB unraid server at home, and a 40TB unraid server at work. Both use 2 x parity disks.

The critical work stuff backs up to home, and the critical home stuff backs up to work.

The media is disposable.

Both servers then back up to Crashplan on separate accounts - work uses the Australian server on a business account, home used the US server on a personal account.

I figure I should be safe unless Australia and the US are nuked simultaneously.... At which point my data integrity is probably not the most pressing issue.

[-] JaddedFauceet@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

why is your work stuff at home and why is your personal stuff at work ಠ_ಠ

[-] trk@aussie.zone 2 points 5 months ago

Yeah I guess it probably makes more sense when it's my business.... Maybe not if you're an employee at some corporate randomly hosting backups of your dog photos.

[-] clif@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

I dunno. At a big company they probably won't notice an extra TB of storage cost... So long as you're discrete with the transfers.

[-] iamthetot@piefed.ca 2 points 6 months ago

The stuff that I actually care about are automatically backed up twice, once to a simple external on site and once to a cloud. The cloud rotates between the most recent backups so it never takes up more than 1tb compressed, while the local external keeps backups for much longer (something like 6tb at a time).

[-] quick_snail@feddit.nl 2 points 6 months ago

Tape or backblaze

[-] OR3X@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

So you have 56TB of total storage, but how much of that 56TB is actually used? Take the amount of storage used and add 10-12% to that figure. Now you create a new NAS (preferably off-site) with that amount of storage and that becomes your backup target. Take an initial backup (locally if possible to speed up the process) and then you can use something like rsync to create incremental backups going forward. This is the method I've used and so far it has worked out well. I target 10-12% more than the amount of used storage for my backup capacity because my storage use grows reasonably slowly. If your usage grows faster you might want to increase your "buffer" a little more so that you're not having to constantly add drives to your backup target.

[-] NekoKoneko@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

Yeah, this is certainly a viable "brute-force"-ish ooption. While I have 56, I'm only using 26 or so. But I'd actually be hesitant to do anything less than a full capacity mirror because I do expect to eventually use this (and more - adding drives to Unraid).

I've balked because of cost and upkeep (maintaining the same capacity, additional chances for drive failure, two separate sites I need physical access to with a high bandwidth connection), so I admit I was hoping I was missing an easier option.

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[-] lepinkainen@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

A second offsite NAS (my old one) with the same capacity for the larger files

Backblaze B2 and a Hezner storage box for Really Important stuff.

[-] Rooster326@programming.dev 1 points 6 months ago
[-] lepinkainen@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

It’s literally a Raspberry pi 3B+ and a USB hard drive in a plastic storage box at my parents house 😅

[-] FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 1 points 6 months ago

I switched to a DAS for my storage and use backblaze to back up all 50TB+. I couldn’t find a cost effective way to do it with a NAS.

[-] Mister_Hangman@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

Definitely following this

[-] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 1 points 6 months ago

I don't for media. I have 2 parity drives and that's it. I'd like to do some kind of off site mirror but I haven't had time to figure it out and buying enough storage to do that is expensive.

My actual data for like taxes and stuff is backed up to my server and backblaze.

[-] Batman@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

I've started using k8up to save my photos and config to an encrypted restic repo in an s3 bucket. having a lot of trouble backing up my SQL DB though, not as easy as they make it sound.

[-] tommij@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

Zfs send. Done

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this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2026
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