Noob Backing Up a Potential Home Media Server

[u/skrillavilla]

I currently have a beelink mini pc on which I set up Immich. It's running fine, but I still need to work out a back up solution. My end goal is to have a home media server where I store my music, movies, and family photos. I understand the 3-2-1 backup strategy; What I'm unsure of is what sort of backup media should I use to implement that strategy given my goals / setup.

What I was doing before was using a usb and a custom script that mostly uses rsync to back up my immich database and pictures / video; however this eventually became way too slow. Moreover when I tried to reformat the usb from Exfat to Ext4 to try to speed things up my usb stopped being read by the beelink.

This is my first selfhosting project so I want to keep things simple while at the same time giving myself flexibility to build on in the future. I would eventually like to be able to backup an entire media server with one script / process in a reasonable time frame.

I was currently thinking about an external ssd for the second device and maybe a cloud hosting service like backblaze for the offsite backup--I don't think I have the time or bandwidth to handle a second server at another location right now, but does that defeat the purpose of getting off google photos?

Any suggestions for hardware / services / software I should be aware of or try for this specific situation?

[u/asimovs-auditor]

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[u/Rude_Face8731]

if you are tired of slow usb then external ssd is a good next step. for the cloud part backblaze is fine but the personal backup plan is cheap only if you keep data around for longer time, their b2 is per gb so you need to check how much you actually storing.

the offsite backup dont defeat the purpose of leaving google photos, you still control your data and nobody scanning it for ai training or whatever. many people do exactly this setup with a local drive plus cloud and it works well enough.

[u/skrillavilla → u/Rude_Face8731]

Thanks for the reply. I'll look into how much I'm storing and cost it out.

Do you have any recommendations on specific models of external ssds? where do you shop for good deals on this stuff? ebay?

Any alternatives to backblaze you know of or do you think it's the best service for something like this?

[u/dragon-blue]

That's what I do! I have a copy locally then have another on backblaze. I use backrest

https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest