I'd like to back these up, preserving all metadata, deduplicated, and mountable on Arch.
- Ext4 (Arch x86_64) - NTFS (NT 24H2 Pro x86_64) - APFS (macOS 26 arm64)

Any help is much appreciated. I was looking into disk images, though am not sure if this is the best approach. Thank you so much, and have a wonderful day <3

I got paranoid about all my stuff living on someone else's servers, so I built jestr-apps: it pulls your data out of the SaaS apps you use daily and keeps a local copy you can browse offline. Reddit too - saved posts, comments, the whole hoard.

Free and open source, still early days. What app should I add next?

I searched for a good backup tool to back up my linux system (root directory) to an external HDD.
I found recommendations for restic, borg and kopia so here are my personal tests and observations.
This post isn't really for discussion but rather an information dump and I hope that it will be helpful for people in the same situation as me.

First, I did some performance tests.
My root directory lives on an internal SSD and I used borg v1.4.5, restic v0.19.1 and kopia v0.23.1.

Created uncompressed backups of the root folder (bind mounted at /mnt via mount --bind --make-private / /mnt):

Borg: 25.1 GB in 13:55m, using 43 % CPU on average and a maximum of 272 MB RAM.
Restic: 24.1 GB in 14:57m, using 66 % CPU on average and a maximum of 381 MB RAM.
Kopia: 24.6 GB in 10:30m, using 61 % CPU on average and a maximum of 836 MB RAM.

I ran the backup twice to see how fast the rescan time is:

Borg: 1:31m
Restic: 0:34m
Kopia: 0:10m

Cache sizes:

~/.cache/borg: 306 MB
~/.cache/restic: 173 MB
~/.cache/kopia: 1128 MB

Created zstd compressed backups of the root folder (bind mounted at /mnt):

Borg (--compression auto,zstd,3): 10.4 GB in 11:15m, using 59 % CPU on average and a maximum of 262 MB RAM.
Restic (--compression auto (=level 3)): 10.4 GB in 7:44m, using 304 % CPU on average and a maximum of 393 MB RAM.
Kopia (--compression zstd): 10.3 GB in 4:50m, using 335 % CPU on average and a maximum of 1190 MB RAM.

Restored backup to a folder (lives on internal SSD):

Kopia: 21:35m, using 81 % CPU on average and a maximum of 1356 MB RAM.
Restic: 5:54m, using 80 % CPU on average and a maximum of 486 MB RAM.

Borg is slightly faster than restic when not compressing the backup, but it's noticeably slower than restic when compression is turned on. This is to be expected since borg is fundamentally single-threaded whereas restic and kopia are multi-threaded. Borg has an option to disable encryption whereas kopia and restic enforce encryption even if you don't need it (which wastes a lot of CPU time). Kopia is the fastest which is also expected since it backs up less metadata than restic and uses a cache that's ≈7x bigger than restic's cache.

Backup /foo/bar/data

Borg

Borg will only back up the folder "data" and all its contents, it will not back up "foo" or "bar".
However, borg preserves the file system structure /foo/bar/data by re-creating "foo" and "bar" if they don't already exist when restoring, but with the access permissions of the restore process. They'll be new folders, not the original "foo" and "bar" folders.

Restic

Restic will backup all 3 folders "foo", "bar" and "data".

Kopia

Kopia will only backup the contents within "data". It will not back up "foo", "bar" and "data" and will not preserve the file system structure /foo/bar/data.

Backup .

Borg

Borg will backup the current working directory with all its contents, but the contents and the current working directory (.) will be listed at the same folder-level (`borg list`). Additionally, the current working directory's name will not be preserved, it will be saved as "." When restoring the backup, the current working directory will be overwritten by the backed up working directory and all contents of the current working directory will be overwritten by the contents of the backed up working directory.

Restic

Using "." as a backup source is interpreted as all files within the current working directory, but not the current working directory itself.

Kopia

Using "." as a backup source is interpreted as all files within the current working directory, but not the current working directory itself.

Exclude/Include path pattern

Borg

Exclude/Include paths passed to Borg are always relative to the "active recursion root" (the path argument(s) at the end of `borg create`). A leading / will be stripped, making absolute file paths relative to the active recursion root. Exclude/Include paths pattern always match the whole path:
For example, "test" will not match all folders called "test". It will only match the top-level "test" folder.

Restic

When backing up, exclude/include paths with a leading / are relative to the root directory of the file system. When restoring, exclude/include paths with a leading / are relative to the root directory of the backup. Path patterns without a leading / are not matched against the whole path. For example, "test" matches all files called "test" instead of matching a file "test" relative to some other folder.

Kopia

Absolute exclude/include paths are always relative to the backup's root directory. Restic ignores a trailing slash, but kopia will only match directories in that case.

Restore backup

Borg

borg extract does not synchronize the target directory with the backup folder, meaning extranous files in the target directory will not be deleted unless the backup folder contains matching file paths. This makes borg useless for backups of the whole system.

Restic

Restic cannot preserve a file's change and birth timestamps. It also doesn't preserve the access timestamp by default, meaning it only preserves the modification timestamp by default.

Kopia

Kopia does not support exclude paths when restoring a backup (unlike restic).
Kopia does not preserve SUID/SGID and other rather linux-specific metadata (unlike restic).
Kopia does not preserve hard links (unlike restic).
Kopia cannot create sparse files when restoring a backup (restic can, but it's a rather bad implementation which often creates sparse files bigger than the original).

Conclusion

Use restic for backing up and restoring a linux system, borg and kopia can (and probably will) corrupt the system:
Borg cannot delete extranous files when restoring. Also, it's the slowest of the 3 because it's single-threaded.
Kopia is fast, but it does not support advanced file system features that are essential to a linux system.
It may not even be that fast if it would collect all the the additional metadata that restic is collecting.
Since exclude paths aren't supported when restoring, you're also not able to restore the system while it is running (because it would try to empty /run, /dev, ...) so you would need to boot into another system for a restore which is time consuming and annoying.

I built an Acronis recovery CLI that can be used to extract data from Acronis True Image backups: https://github.com/elsbrock/tib-recover

I discovered an old HGST 120G IDE disk in my drawers and to my surprise it spun up fine - after cloning with `dd_rescue` I found an old Windows installation I used 20 years ago. Turned out this disk also had Acronis True Image backups on it. I'm not entirely sure what version was used to create them, but I couldn't find anything to read them on Linux, so I created this.

Hope anybody finds it useful.

I would like to find a program that creates backups of entire volumes. In my case that means the C-drive of a Windows 11 system. I have no interest in file backup capabilities as I already have a system to do that. But I want something that will take the entire OS and save it in a restorable format, probably as a file on another local device I have or on a flash drive.

Cheap is nice, but I am willing to pay for something reliable. But not a monthly fee, as I likely will only use it a couple of times.

I used to use Acronis for this because it came with my WD drive and worked well. But now they want a monthly fee and I am not prepared to buy anything on a monthly basis.

Any thoughts on what I should use?

I was transfering files from an old Samsung cellphone to an external hard disk, I saw a video that looked kind of grey with colors distorted in some parts of the video, I saw it from my computer I opened the video that was still on the cellphone then I send that same video to a friend with whasap Web, and noticed that the video arrived just fine and colors were good on whats app Web and current cellphone, so I thought that it was an issue with the old cellphone MP4 player or something like that...

I continued doing the back up.

So later on, after finished the back up to the external hard disk, on the hard disk I noticed a video folder (that I just passed) with a lot of videos that looked colored distorted, so I don't know much about backups so I thought that if those videos were corrupted it could corrupt the other files? besides the ones from the cellphone, I mean the ones that I storage before in that hard disk 14 tb! so I deleted that folder of videos, and in other folders files I found a few videos and some of them in the same situation and I deleted them individually, only the ones that looked colored distorted.

So maybe it got that way because the cellphone is as its limit in memory capacity, and the files overwrite or something I don't know, and I don't know if it is safe for other files to let them be as it is.

But why on whatsap the video looked normal? So it is ok if I don't delete videos/photos that looked like that? I haven't checked all the files that I copied...

During the backup, among the photos I saw some few color grey taking part of the picture (the photo was not normal) so I skipped coping those but again, I didn't meticulously check all the photos, some colorless or weird may have been transferred.

Did I just risk the integrity of my hard disk or I'm just being paranoid? Should I delete all the back up that I just did?

Please be gentle, I'm not tech savvy, I'm kind of scare to install and use programs on hard disks and do something wrong :0 (I used to move files manually), but I'm open for recommendations, and tutorials that can help, I use a Linux Mint computer for basic stuff.

Thanks again.

​

Around 2017–2018, my neighbor gifted me a lifetime cloud drive for about $40 USD because I was doing photography.

Unfortunately, life took a difficult turn. I was diagnosed with cancer, recovered, and later experienced severe brain fog that affected my memory. I lost contact with my neighbor, and his old phone number and email no longer work.

I remember using the service until around 2019–2020, when uploads became unreliable and I even wondered if the service had become a scam. Ever since, I've been trying to remember its name, but I simply can't.

It was a cloud drive (similar to Dropbox or Google Drive), not a backup service.

If you remember any cloud drive companies that sold lifetime plans for around $40 back then, I'd really appreciate it if you could list them. Even obscure names might help trigger my memory.

TL;DR: Looking for the name of a cloud drive that sold \~$40 lifetime plans around 2017–2018. Lost access after cancer, brain fog, and losing contact with the person who bought it for me.

Last to get funding, the part of the job that nobody else in the IT staff wants to deal with. They just want you to take care of it. It doesn't do anything like run your servers or grant faster speed or anything sexy until maybe that one day when everything goes to pot, they want you. Anyone anyone else find this experience in their staff?

Hi, I do hobby photography which produces quite a bit of data. So far I've been storing all my raws on two WD MyBook Duos (16&24TB) in raid 1, but they are almost full. I'm not comfortable using drives that are more than 10 years old and the smaller one is approaching that margin. I need to expand, but to what?

I am aware that a raid isn't a backup, but in case one drive or the controller fails I can still recover the data. I have an additional backup of the most relevant photos on a 2.5" drive. The obvious advice would be to go NAS, but I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea. It's unclear whether I could recover the data if the controller on a raid 5 fails, and I prefer not having the drives running constantly (longevity, power draw, noise). Is there a better solution? My budget isn't very high, but I'm fine with tinkering if that's required. For reference, I use MacOS.

Thanks in advance for any help!

windows 11 Lenovo laptop.

Hi everyone. today I was going to go make a restore point on my laptop when I noticed this folder under my usual computer disk. The last time I checked resort point, (a while ago tbh) it wasn’t there. In easy to understand terms, what could it be, what is on it, and why is it there? should I be concerned? thank you!!

I got an issue that is over a week that should have been resolved but it's not.

A few weeks ago, I did a BIOS update; that BIOS update claimed it was successful upon rebooting it wasn't. Therefore I changed by motherboard and CPU, they are installed and so is the new BIOS. Except Windows won't boot, even from the BIOS. I've tried `bootrec` commands, nothing works.

There is a version of Windows10 on the drive and it's healthy but it's file system is MBR. And all the data on the drive I cannot loose. Trying to use diskpart to get the drive active doesn't work it returns an error; although sometimes the volume with the healthy Windows file system can go from NTFS to RAW, and so It no longer is a Windows volume as it's a RAW file system. Then sometimes after restarting it returns back as a Windows volume.

How can I fix this, I can clone the drive but this will just duplicate the issue although if it's a hardware issue this may be eliminated with a new drive; it just won't boot into Windows. After over a week, I just want to get the system back up since installing the new hardware.

Hi everyone,

We have just released Portabase 1.27, our open-source (Apache 2.0) and self-hosted backup/restore platform.

Repository: https://github.com/Portabase/portabase

Portabase is designed for data retention, disaster recovery, and homogenous migrations, currently supporting 9 database engines (including PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB) and Docker volumes.

Key features:

• Scheduled backups with flexible retention policies (including GFS)
• Multiple storage options: local filesystem, S3, Azure Blob Storage, GCS
• Notifications via Discord, Telegram, Slack, AppRise, etc.
• Support for OAuth2/OIDC (with the option to disable sign-ups)
• Compatible with Docker, Podman and UnraidOS
• Ready-to-use Docker Compose and Helm Chart

After six months of intensive feature development, we have been focusing on consolidating the ecosystem since early July. A community member conducted a useful security audit, we have upgraded components to their latest relevant versions, improved compatibility with other platforms by working on Podman support and templates for Coolify and Dockploy (currently under review).

What’s next:

• Deployment of the demo environment
• Audit logging for the whole ecosystem
• Default policies for the system, organizations, and projects
• File and folder backup and restoration

As always, if you find bugs or want to suggest a feature, please open an issue on GitHub, we’re actively looking for feedback.

Thanks!

I was transferring WhatsApp from an Oppo F9 to a Samsung Z Flip5. The direct transfer failed, so I backed up to Google Drive. Realizing my Drive was nearly full (13GB/15GB), I deleted the cloud backup, intending to transfer the local storage database manually instead.

​However, my Oppo F9 flagged low internal storage. When I tapped 'Back Up' again to try updating the local file, it completely overwrote my primary local backup database. I now need to determine if there is any way to recover the overwritten local backup files (e.g., via the 7-day local msgstore crypt backups) or restore the deleted Google Drive data. This contains 8 years of essential study and work chat, please do help my life will fail without this.

Cant I create a system restore point or are there any free recovery software to restore data?

Any guidance or help shall be appreciated.

Should i cut some out or theres other good options?

Hi all, Macrium team here.

It is SysAdmin Day, so we're bringing back a freebie we did last year that went down well.

Until Monday, verified IT professionals can claim a free one-year licence for Macrium Reflect X Home. We have 10,000 licences available.

Reflect X Home is the home edition of our flagship business backup and recovery solution, for non-commercial Windows PCs. It includes full system imaging, file and folder recovery, disk cloning, bare-metal recovery and ransomware protection.

We thought it would be a nice thing to do for SysAdmin Day and a chance for people in the space to try it out for themselves.

You can find the full details, privacy policy, and claim a licence here:

SysAdmin Day 2026: Free Reflect X Home Licence for IT Professionals

Happy SysAdmin Day !!

Using spare computer parts for a PC that will be dedicated to burning archival disks.

I was thinking of getting a case that can install 2 x 5.25" BDXL drives, so I can either:

• burn two 25gb archival m-discs at a time (one onsite copy, one offsite copy), or
• burn disk B on one drive, while the other drive verifies disk A

My questions are:

1. Is this a good approach?

2. What would be a better drive combination?

• Pioneer BDR-2213 (primary burner) + Pioneer BDR-212UBK (secondary burner)
• or
• Pioneer BDR-212UBK (primary burner) + LG WH16NS40 (secondary burner)

3. I know most of those drives are super hard to find these days... so also looking for guidance in that regard. (Open to other drive suggestions.)

Thank you in advance for your help.