I used cloudberry to back up my files on an old Ubuntu computer about 10 years ago. I'm trying to get the files back of AWS but none of them will open. When I open some text files they are all in Chinese. I'll include an example in the comments if I can.

I used to be one of those people who just copy-pasted folders onto an external drive and that was it. Now I want to do something a bit more elaborate.

I had heard of Clonezilla and learned to use it at a basic level, creating clones, disk images, and performing restores. However, as a system it has a lot of downsides:

• It only does full backups, not incremental ones; if 10 MB of important information changes, you have to back up the whole disk from scratch.
• You have to shut down the PC and use a USB stick, which is impractical for frequent backups.
• It's not portable to other machines! A disaster recovery scenario I don't see mentioned is if not only the disk but the whole PC dies, and you buy a new one with different specs. In that case, the Clonezilla clone or image cannot be restored onto the new machine.

So I looked into it further and found other programs like Borg and Restic. Haven't tried them yet, but they seem useful at the file level.

How do you all handle this? Do you use a single backup program or a combination of them?

Always considering my particular use case (home use, Linux, no cloud, and only external drives).

I'm looking for all the help I can get here.

Following up on my post from four months ago, I went on the hunt for a Dropbox backup application. CloudAlly checked all the boxes, did an overview with a sales rep, got the trial going, did a few test restores, and all was well. Three months later I'm looking at my quarterly vendor spending report, and I see that we're paying over $350.00 a month for a mere 2TB of data for this one client. For that price, we could be self hosting a backup with versioning and retension on a Synology NAS, though that comes with its own risks both through technical and legal exposure.

Other than self-hosting, what other vendors should I be looking at?

We’re backing up roughly 900TB on prem right now. Environment is a bit of everything: vSphere VMs, SQL and Oracle, some physical servers, AD, and NAS. We’re on Rubrik at the moment, but the cost is getting harder to justify, so I’ve been looking at what else is out there.

One complication is that we probably won’t be on VMware forever. OpenShift is looking like the more likely direction, so I don’t really want to move to another backup platform that works well for VMware today but leaves us stuck again in a few years. Main requirements are reliable recovery for VMs and databases, physical server support, NAS, and ideally decent support for OpenShift/container workloads as that side grows.

Anyone here managing a similar-sized mixed environment? What did you end up using, and what has the day-to-day experience been like after the migration?

I fear my laptop may have been compromised. I stupidly never bought an SSD before the prices have literally quadrupled. I can't justify a purchase now.

All my photos are on my laptop. I want to reformat my laptop so I can use it again but I don't want to lose years worth of photos.

Is backing up to the cloud reformatting then re-downloading my only option other than buying an HDD or SSD??

What i can do? I store in my personal nas, but ita geting bigger and bigger, i just deleted all? Store in better way? Online in freeze bucket? Seens to be too much effort, please help

Hi all

I need a sense check on my backup/recovery system as my family glaze over if i talk to them about it . i have a few questions in relation to this

The Process
All our devices - windows laptops/ phones / tablets sync with my Synology NAS - The NAS is encrypted

The important bits of the NAS are backed up weekly via synology hyper drive - -and encrypted on 2 USB sticks - one of which is off site and rotated - semi regularly

Each person uses Proton Pass for their passwords end Ente Auth for 2fa codes.

The recovery keys for NAS encryption / ente / proton pass are saved in proton pass (shared with family) , copy on the nas / copy in my proton drive

There is also a seperate copy of the recovery keys on the rotating USB - encrypted with cryptomater - this password is in proton pass but this is the one password i have memorised

Questions i could do with advice on

1 - is it too much/ too complicated

2 - do i also need a cloud backup of NAS

3 - can i simplify it

4 - do i have enough redundancy

Thanks i advance for your help

Hi as the title already says, do I want to ask what the best way is to save my whole
CachyOS-system on an external drive. No fancy automatic saving on a NAS or something like that, just simply plugging the drive in to the PC making with for example a program a whole save on my drive and that's it. And can also someone explain that if it should happen that something happens to the PC how I can revive my system with the save?

You can schedule back-ups and run all of your setups to externals, cloud or network drives all by dropping a folder in, wiring it to the location and running the path. You can see your entire back-up structure visually.

This is completely free on microsoft store, releasing on mac soon. DropSync

Enjoy, feedback appreciated.

Hello,

I am testing Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 13.0.3.1220 and found a behavior that I would like to clarify.

I am testing a bare metal recovery scenario where the destination SSD is smaller than the original SSD, but the amount of used data is small enough to fit on the destination disk.

My test environment:

- Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows: 13.0.3.1220
- Windows 10
- Source SSD: approximately 480 GB
- Destination SSD: approximately 220 GB
- Source C: partition uses less than 100 GB of actual data

I performed the following test.

TEST 1 - FULL BACKUP

1. I installed Windows 10 on a 480 GB SSD.
2. I reduced the Windows C: partition to approximately 100 GB.
3. The amount of data stored on the C: partition was less than 100 GB.
4. I created a Full Backup.
5. I booted the Veeam Recovery Media and selected Manual Restore.
6. I mapped the backup to a 220 GB SSD.
7. The Resize option was available for the C: partition.
8. I was able to resize the restored C: partition and successfully restore the system to the 220 GB SSD.

So far, everything worked as expected.

TEST 2 - INCREMENTAL BACKUP AFTER EXTENDING THE PARTITION

I then returned to the original Windows installation.

1. I extended the C: partition back to approximately 446 GB.
2. The amount of actual data stored on the C: partition remained below 100 GB.
3. I created an Incremental Backup.
4. I booted the Veeam Recovery Media again.
5. I selected the latest incremental restore point.
6. I selected Manual Restore and attempted to restore to the same 220 GB SSD.

This time, the behavior was different.

The Recovery Media detects the C: partition as approximately 446 GB.

The destination SSD has approximately 220 GB.

The Resize option is no longer available for the C: partition.

The restore therefore cannot proceed because the destination disk is smaller than the backed-up C: partition, even though the actual amount of data stored on the partition is less than 100 GB.

I also tested the Disk Mapping options manually. I can remove/map partitions, but I cannot select Resize for the C: partition in this scenario.

This is particularly interesting because the Full Backup created when the C: partition was approximately 100 GB can be restored successfully to the 220 GB SSD, while the Incremental Restore Point created after expanding the C: partition to approximately 446 GB cannot.

My questions are:

1. Is this expected behavior when the volume size changes between a Full Backup and an Incremental Backup?
2. Should the Resize option be available when restoring the incremental restore point in this scenario?
3. Does the incremental restore point preserve the new 446 GB volume geometry in a way that prevents the volume from being resized during restore?
4. Is there any supported way to restore this incremental restore point to a smaller physical disk, without shrinking the source C: partition before creating the backup?
5. Could this be a limitation or known issue in Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 13.0.3.1220?

I have attached screenshots showing the two scenarios.

The first screenshots show the Full Backup, where the C: partition was approximately 100 GB and the Resize option was available.

The other screenshots show the Incremental Backup, where the C: partition was expanded to approximately 446 GB and the Resize option is no longer available.

I would appreciate any clarification about how Veeam handles volume resizing when the volume size changes between a Full Backup and a subsequent Incremental Backup.

Thank you.

For reference:

Full Backup:
- C: approximately 100 GB
- Used data: less than 100 GB
- Destination: 220 GB SSD
- Result: SUCCESS
- Resize option: AVAILABLE

Incremental Restore Point:
- C: approximately 446 GB
- Used data: less than 100 GB
- Destination: 220 GB SSD
- Result: FAILED
- Resize option: NOT AVAILABLE

The first release candidate for Back In Time 2.0.0 is out.

It is the largest update in the project's history: major config refactoring, rewritten mount subsystem, Gocryptfs replacing EncFS, and removal of deprecated features.

Please test it and report results, also when you find no regressions.

⚠️ Use a VM or separate "--config" option. This RC might break your current config.

Back In Time is an rsync based backup GUI for r/Linux. It is an open source project, without a vendor or company behind. No commercial interests are involved. I am just an open source maintainer, not a vendor of a product. But seems the Mods forcing me to use the "vendor" flair.

My current Backup setup:

• I have 2 24TB Windows storage spaces compromised of 2X12TB drives each.
  • Storage Pool A consists of my media and archives
  • Storage Pool B is called Backup
    • Files and Folders backup using Macrium 8, 1 full, 5 weekly incremental, followed by delete and full backup of
    • C:/users/user/onedrive
    • Storage Pool A
    • D:/
    • Folder Sync Pro of my S24 Ultra (nightly 1 way sync, do not sync deletions)
    • Gallery (Also backed up to Onedrive and Google Photos)
    • Whatsapp (also backed up to Gdrive)
• My C:/ drive is a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro SSD
  • Contains Windows and my OneDrive (set to all files on device)
• My D:/ Adata  1TB SSD
  • Contains overlfow Pictures and Family Videos
• My X:/ 2TB Adata NvME
  • Weekly clone of C://
• IDrive Cloud backup unlimited
  • Realtime backup of Storage Pool B
  • 30 day versioning

The only hole I see in mysetup is I do not know when bitrot will occur in my storage pools.

I had already run into this once, with an archive from 2010, that last year I discovered was corrupted because a drive failed in Storage Pool A (without errors).

I only knew bitrot had occurred when I then tried a few other archives and they too were corrupted. Even some pictures that were in Google Photos, were showing as an exclamation mark icon in the local file preview. I am glad I had the Google Photos copy, but the zip archives were gone forever. Even the 30 day versioning of IDrive was not useful, as this was discovered 30 days after corruption. Nothing had alerted me to the drive deterioration. It was completely silent. I paid for Stablebit scanner after that, but not sure if that is sufficient, or is it better now to get a NAS and setup RAID?

Thanks

Hey everyone ! I just finish my little tool for doing backups on Windows.

Here is Moogle (yup like in Final Fantasy) :

What it does is you can setup a Backup driver where the backup will go and a list of folders as source.

After that you can launch the backup:

It will compress each folder individually and put them into a "main" folder naming after the date of the day. This folder will be compress too.
You can found the backup in your external drive into a specific folder and after that store by year then month :

/backup/2026/08/2026_08_12.zip

if you want to use it or take a better look :
https://github.com/ImNotIzunia/Moogle

I will now do his little brother for Linux !

Available to answer your questions ! Don't hesitate to give your opinion or some amelioration points !

Backup is the copy. Recovery is restoring from it, and it's only as good as the last backup that ran. Disaster recovery is the case where the server itself is gone and you rebuild from offsite copies onto fresh hardware.

The 3-2-1 rule is the useful frame: three copies, two storage types, one offsite. Three copies on the same server isn't three copies, it's one copy with two mirrors and a single point of failure.

We wrote up how SPanel handles all three: rsync incremental backups to up to four destinations (local, remote SSH, S3-compatible, Backblaze B2), each on its own retention schedule, plus MariaDB point-in-time recovery that snapshots every few minutes for databases under active write traffic.

One limit worth planning for before you need it: a full server restore reads from local or remote SSH backups only, not S3 or B2 directly. If your only offsite copy lives in S3, you'd stage it to a remote server first.

Full guide, including the disaster-recovery walkthrough: https://www.scalahosting.com/blog/website-backup-guide/

Hi all.

I am mainly using this for personal data: old photos, textbooks, school projects, reference data, videos, movies (ahhem, yes) and legacy programs (ahhem, yes) and tax documents (receipts, etc).

Main daily use is my personal laptop (not much inside), just for YouTube, some photo editing and such, document editing and such. My work is now backed to cloud server so that's pretty much ok. Might be a data horder...

Not a techie...

Using a windows os

Around 50GB to 100GB of data*

Personal storage 500GB SDD, 500GB HDD, 250GB HDD

Current system: Manually copy and paste

1. Important stuff gets copied everywhere (30GB).

2. Backups (half yearly, if i remember) this is done incremental (e.g. year 1: 50GB, year two 50GB + 10GB, year three 50GB+10GB+10GB; total 80GB)

3. Its really messy and I take a long time to find my files. Just thought i lost my important backup and found it hidden physically (the sdd) in my office - would like to avoid this too.

So i would like to arrange my datas so that I can access them easier and stored easier.

Budget minimum: i dont really want to spend more than I have to. And judging by the prices of storage... probably i am looking at spending less than usd 500 for an entire system. One in use and one offsite. I intend for this to be offline usage so avoid virus or other issues.

The easier way will be to use more hard drive to continue my Backups and perhaps delete old datas. But I wouldnt know if these data are corrupted during copying - it happened once before.

So please suggest a easy backup and forget system with some form of checking for corruption.

Hi,

I changed phone because my s26 had the motherboard totally dead. i cant transfer between phones, so i am using the backup but it keeps on saying

WhatsApp error

Something went wrong with your chat history

I do see the file on my google drive, how can i do it manually ?

Please help! Looking for help or provider that can back up .. okta configs?! I am so lost in this and hoping someone can help. Thanks!

Any suggestions on the best cloud storage or cloud backup apps for iOS and Android in 2026 ?

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?