linux-timemachine VS restic

> I am concerned about the longevity of my archives

If you're concerned about archival longevity, and I for one certainly are, then maybe consider not to compress at all. Both compression and encryption add to obscurity and loss of redundancy in the backup. Using a widely understood file system and a very obvious arrangement of the data (for me that means: directories with dates, below a tree of files that mimics their original locations) will be a huge plus should the data have to be recovered at some point in the future.

Personally I am using a slightly adapted version of https://github.com/cytopia/linux-timemachine for this task. You do get de-duplication for the file transfer, but each file is written as it was on the target. You'll get a timestamped directory for each time a backup was run. Like MacOS' timemachine, the script uses hard links to de-duplicate identical files across different timestamped directories so the overall space requirement for that incremental backup you did an hour or a day later can be very small.

I can certify that this setup, while it does not occupy the least conceivable amount of storage area, is very amenable to be searched and trivial to use for recovery. much better in this regard than any kind of compressed archive format which are always a pain in terms of searchability and so on.

And for file version history and to protect against accidental deletion i use linux-timemachine which backs up over SSH to the same server and keeps versioned incremental backups. This backup also includes my entire /home folder so all apps, appdata and config is contained here.

Linux-TimeMachine: https://github.com/cytopia/linux-timemachine

If you only want to backup specific folders i like the tool linux-timemachine which uses rsync and hardlinks to create incremental backups based on a input and output folder.

You know, another option might be to just rely on something external to your machine if you're worried enough. When I'm dealing with personal machines (usually servers) that are important to me, I usually use Backblaze B2. You could maybe even try using open source variants of Time Machine designed for Linux machines or Borg Backup...though, to be fair, I've never really tried using them for backing up my entire system ( "/" ) partition (https://github.com/cytopia/linux-timemachine).

linux-timemachine

Restic - GitHub

I religiously use Google contacts. It's the simplest way to keep people contacts up to date on Android.

I archive all important documents in specific folders by subject and date. This is backed up to back blaze with restic. https://restic.net/

I use https://ente.io for pictures. I convinced my wife to use it, and she agreed to auto share her photos so I don't nag her for copies. It had simple import from Facebook and Google.

I also keep extensive journals, which really helps to tie it all together. I can basically grep for hangouts, conversations, etc.

I also separate work journal from personal, and have essentially a journal for each project. https://jodavaho.io/tags/bullet-journal.html for how.

I religiously use Google calendar for all plans, you can easily search it for past events to get dates.

I also use monicahq for some notes about things I should remember about people but the habit never stuck.

After Borg, I switched to Restic:

https://restic.net/

AFAIK, the only difference is that Restic doesn't require Restic installed on the remote server, so you can efficiently backup to things like S3 or FTP. Other than that, both are fantastic.

I'm curious, too. I know they've had some issues in the past:

https://github.com/restic/restic/issues/3268#issuecomment-78...

On the other hand, I tested around 15,000 backups last year (multiple hourly backups, daily tests) and they all passed.

I use and recommend restic. I use it for about 60 machines on my LAN, and it's absolutely fantastic.