Solved Advice for backup plan

Hi, from time to time I made manuals backups of my important files(family photos,passwords,etc)
note: all are hard disks , not ssd
besides that , all runs in ZFS with 2 drivers in mirror
I have other machine with one ZFS drive
but I want to make a second hard disk in another filesystem, maybe ntfs or msdos
what is more reliable? ntfs or msdos?
I never have a problem with ZFS,but is better have several backups plans (the next one will be flash units)
the data today not exceeds the 800GB
Thanks
 
maybe ntfs or msdos
Huh? Why do you want to use those for backups, especially when you say yourself
I never have a problem with ZFS
what is more reliable? ntfs or msdos?
ZFS
Now, seriously:
If any of those, then NTFS, but for Windows files, only.
Putting Windows files on a unix FS, or unix[like] (FreeBSD) files on a Windows FS ain't a good idea, while the first case is better than the latter.
It works, but may cause some problems when filenames come above a certain length ("msdos" means FAT) and contain special characters like space et al. (and case sensitivity, yes.)
is better have several backups plans
That's absolutely right.
But I simply don't get it, if you wanna backup Windows files, or just FreeBSD files.
Let's pretend just FreeBSD.
Then I recommend to create a small ZFS raid pool, maybe a mirror was enough, that you use to backup to. (Also depends of what HDDs you already have for usage, can afford to buy, and the amount of data we're talking. 500G? 1T? 3T? more?
This way you are pretty protected against hardware failures, since one (mirror), two (raidz2), or three (raidz3) drives can fail without you lose data.

Or go the next step, do what I did: Take an old machine, place in some HDDs, one small one you install FreeBSD on (just "vanilla" - no X, nothing; maybe a texteditor, if you don't wanna use ee, or vi), and Samba. Additionally you place the zpool in it. Connect it to your LAN, config NFS for access from FreeBSD, and Samba for Windows machines in your LAN, and SSH to get access to your machine from your workstation, so it needs neither a keyboard, nor a monitor.

Additionally for very important stuff, you may consider to rent some webspace, and periodically tar and encrypt that stuff, and load it on to the webspace.
 
Huh? Why do you want to use those for backups, especially when you say yourself


ZFS
Now, seriously:
If any of those, then NTFS, but for Windows files, only.
Putting Windows files on a unix FS, or unix[like] (FreeBSD) files on a Windows FS ain't a good idea, while the first case is better than the latter.
It works, but may cause some problems when filenames come above a certain length ("msdos" means FAT) and contain special characters like space et al. (and case sensitivity, yes.)

That's absolutely right.
But I simply don't get it, if you wanna backup Windows files, or just FreeBSD files.
Let's pretend just FreeBSD.
Then I recommend to create a small ZFS raid pool, maybe a mirror was enough, that you use to backup to. (Also depends of what HDDs you already have for usage, can afford to buy, and the amount of data we're talking. 500G? 1T? 3T? more?
This way you are pretty protected against hardware failures, since one (mirror), two (raidz2), or three (raidz3) drives can fail without you lose data.

Or go the next step, do what I did: Take an old machine, place in some HDDs, one small one you install FreeBSD on (just "vanilla" - no X, nothing; maybe a texteditor, if you don't wanna use ee, or vi), and Samba. Additionally you place the zpool in it. Connect it to your LAN, config NFS for access from FreeBSD, and Samba for Windows machines in your LAN, and SSH to get access to your machine from your workstation, so it needs neither a keyboard, nor a monitor.

Additionally for very important stuff, you may consider to rent some webspace, and periodically tar and encrypt that stuff, and load it on to the webspace.

Is only FreeBSD, I use windows for kodi ,cameras records ,music and movies,but that content is backup to ZFS,so no problem
I mean in the way of have choices,I trust in ZFS but I dont want to put all the eggs in the same basket

maybe I dont explain myself right

-today I have a machine ,for daily use, with FreeBSD and ZFS , one ssd for OS
and other disk for personal files (2TB) , with is 800GB used more or less

-I backup all the important stuff to another machine with FreeBSD,this is only for backups
with 2 backup drives (2TB each one) , so , I think , one disk ZFS and the other in another filesystem

the better and reliable choise is use ZFS in the 2 disks and make a mirror in the backup machine?
 
the better and reliable choise is use ZFS in the 2 disks and make a mirror in the backup machine?
If you don't intend to make any backups from Windows at all, but only have FreeBSD to care about I would not chose any MS FS, neither FAT ("msdos") nor NTFS - causes only complications, and trouble, since you at least need to mount them with an extra option, and for NTFS you need fuse... - BS! (sorry, but that's the shortest answer. 😁:cool:)

No. ZFS or UFS. No question.

As I said: I do have a second machine (my former, twenty year old PC), now containing 9 HDDS: 4 in two mirrors each, and 5 in a raidz3 pool - not an exemplary setup! If I'd redo it, I would do it otherwise: 1 (small) drive for the system (currently it's ~10G - so no large drive needed), and one ZFS raidz2 or raidz3 pool of at least 5 drives, just containing the data, being independent from the system.
I use this not only for to save - "store away" - all the stuff which uses lots of storage space, but I don't need to hands for daily use - pictures, library (PDFs, ebooks, audiobooks, disc images, software packages), old Windows stuff, old garbage at all, music, videos, svn repos - with my not top-speed ethernet (yes, I'm wired) I can watch movies lagfree directly over NFS: to me that's suffient - and to backup my workstation, and laptop (/homes/, /root/ /etc/ et al) at least daily to it. Since workstation also contains of mirrors, only, I feel pretty safe against hardware failures.

Additionally I do every couple of months additional backups of my server: Attach two large HDDs to a spare SATA port, and copy all the files to those drives.
Those drives are UFS. They are not as pools, no redundancy - they are additional redundancy, and since they just need to save files which I do nothing with them, I neither need no features like snapshots on them.

Within FreeBSD it doesn't matter, if the files are on ZFS or UFS - just copy them 1:1.

What you want, or can do is your choice, of course - and depends on what hardware you have, and what you can afford to buy. A backup server can be set up on any old hardware you get for a few bucks in a second-hand store - important things are the storage drives, only. As long as they are tiptop the rest can go up in smoke.

A mirror can be set up already with two drives, and you can add any number of drives to it, so to gain the most safety against hardware failure possible, because as long as one drive is good all the others can fail. But all you get is the storage of the smallest drive in the pool - or the space of one drive, if all are the same size.
A ZFS raid pool gives you better ratio on number of drives and available storage, but you need at least 4 drives to create a raidz2, and 5 for a raidz3 pool, while then you can afford to lose either 2, or 3 drives without any data loss.

To me it's logical to do the backups on the machine with the lowest chance of hardware failure (drives).
In theory it may not make a difference, if you run for example a raidz3 pool of 5 drives on your workstation, and do backups to a single drive, or run a single drive in your WS, and do BUs to a 5 drive raid pool.
But personally to me it simply feels more correct to have the higher redundancy on the backup machine.
Maybe other opinions to this might help.
 
If you don't intend to make any backups from Windows at all, but only have FreeBSD to care about I would not chose any MS FS, neither FAT ("msdos") nor NTFS - causes only complications, and trouble, since you at least need to mount them with an extra option, and for NTFS you need fuse... - BS! (sorry, but that's the shortest answer. 😁:cool:)

No. ZFS or UFS. No question.

As I said: I do have a second machine (my former, twenty year old PC), now containing 9 HDDS: 4 in two mirrors each, and 5 in a raidz3 pool - not an exemplary setup! If I'd redo it, I would do it otherwise: 1 (small) drive for the system (currently it's ~10G - so no large drive needed), and one ZFS raidz2 or raidz3 pool of at least 5 drives, just containing the data, being independent from the system.
I use this not only for to save - "store away" - all the stuff which uses lots of storage space, but I don't need to hands for daily use - pictures, library (PDFs, ebooks, audiobooks, disc images, software packages), old Windows stuff, old garbage at all, music, videos, svn repos - with my not top-speed ethernet (yes, I'm wired) I can watch movies lagfree directly over NFS: to me that's suffient - and to backup my workstation, and laptop (/homes/, /root/ /etc/ et al) at least daily to it. Since workstation also contains of mirrors, only, I feel pretty safe against hardware failures.

Additionally I do every couple of months additional backups of my server: Attach two large HDDs to a spare SATA port, and copy all the files to those drives.
Those drives are UFS. They are not as pools, no redundancy - they are additional redundancy, and since they just need to save files which I do nothing with them, I neither need no features like snapshots on them.

Within FreeBSD it doesn't matter, if the files are on ZFS or UFS - just copy them 1:1.

What you want, or can do is your choice, of course - and depends on what hardware you have, and what you can afford to buy. A backup server can be set up on any old hardware you get for a few bucks in a second-hand store - important things are the storage drives, only. As long as they are tiptop the rest can go up in smoke.

A mirror can be set up already with two drives, and you can add any number of drives to it, so to gain the most safety against hardware failure possible, because as long as one drive is good all the others can fail. But all you get is the storage of the smallest drive in the pool - or the space of one drive, if all are the same size.
A ZFS raid pool gives you better ratio on number of drives and available storage, but you need at least 4 drives to create a raidz2, and 5 for a raidz3 pool, while then you can afford to lose either 2, or 3 drives without any data loss.

To me it's logical to do the backups on the machine with the lowest chance of hardware failure (drives).
In theory it may not make a difference, if you run for example a raidz3 pool of 5 drives on your workstation, and do backups to a single drive, or run a single drive in your WS, and do BUs to a 5 drive raid pool.
But personally to me it simply feels more correct to have the higher redundancy on the backup machine.
Maybe other opinions to this might help.

you rigth , ZFS is rock solid over the years ,never let me down, so ZFS will be
thanks!
 
I've seen folks who had a sophisticated "backup plan". But then, when the event happened they were not able to restore from backup. They failed because they could not restore.
Long story short: You need to know what to do when a recovery is necessary. Train it! And verify that your backups are really valid.
 
I've seen folks who had a sophisticated "backup plan". But then, when the event happened they were not able to restore from backup. They failed because they could not restore.
Long story short: You need to know what to do when a recovery is necessary. Train it! And verify that your backups are really valid.

in my case I lost very important backups because of ZFS misuse(blame on me), agreed, train and learn...train and learn
 
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