My file system is btrfs, so the backups (snapshots) don’t require all of the storage that they apparently should. It is complicated, but unchanged blocks of data are not physically included over and over.
Are you sending your snapshots to another machine? How is that working for you?
This is the missing link in my backup scheme, and the reason is that I haven’t yet decided what I want to do about encryption for offsite backups. I was all set to use Boxcryptor locally and send the encrypted results to offsite storage (resulting in zero knowledge encryption), but then Dropbox bought out Boxcryptor and blew up that ecosystem. Encryption may be less important for photos than a lot of other stuff we keep on our computers, but we do need to encrypt what we need to protect. I’m curious what folks here are using for encrypting their offsite backups.
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Restic, Borg, kopia all offer encryption.
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I recently started using Borg for (encrypted) off-site backup to some hetzner storage box.
A very nice plus of Borg over rsync (and some other tools I checked) is, that its deduplication doesn’t depend on filename/path. That is, you can rename and move files without causing an additional copy at the backup location.
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No, it is an external drive on the same machine. I separate it after performing backups by umounting and physically disconnecting it. A poor man’s solution, I know.
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Not at all, I have the same thing going.
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You may consider a Btrfs RAID-1 as a self-healing setup to prevent bit-rot.
Something I have been using for personal backups and archives ever since reading this article 10 years ago…
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But RAID is not a backup. The bitrot protections are nice, but it is not a replacement for point-in-time based backups.
In this case it’s a backup. It happens to be on RAID volume.
I do the same, but I have two external discs. I swap them around once a week (or so… I’m strict, but not very!). One does not have to be very rich to add that second disc. I use a simple rsync-based process, so no timeline backup. I do not have cloud storage.
It is still a poor man’s solution in that there is no way I would have accepted it as sufficient when I was a systems manager.
I used to keep one disk at a friend’s house, but my wife raised an untrustworthy-teen alert and I took notice. So both disks are in one house. I’m an atheist but I pray to be spared from lightening strikes!
the whole technology has moved on heaps since I retired and I didn’t keep up with the tools people are discussing here.
But this hasn’t changed, and never will, and it absolutely vital, so let me repeat the message:
It is not a backup if it is on the same machine.
It is not a backup if/when it is connected to the same machine.
It is not a backup it it is connected (wired, at least) to the same local network as the machine.
All those things are just additional copies. Not backups.
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Does any body that uses one of the mentioned applications, ie Borg, Kopia, and restic have some opinions about one vs the other and if so why you made the choice to go that route… I took a quick look at all three but that’s hardly enough… I am in the process of revamping things at home. I recently made a small image server for work and its has inspired me to put something in place at home…Likely a raid of about 4 drives for now…so my editing PC and home office PC have drive replication built in and this can will be backed up to the server as well… I guess then an off-site or cloud solution remains…anyway just curious about those applications… I dont’ need much more than a set it and forget it solution…
Kopia and Borg both have good GUIs on some platforms, if I’m not mistaken. Restic doesn’t really.
From a feature standpoint, they are more or less the same. Pick one, get it going on a timer, and just go with it.
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I was won over by the ease of the ui and relative flexibility of borgbase after looking into Amazon S3 Glacier storage briefly as one of the cheapest options.
I can’t remember why I gave up on AWS in the end though there’s a random article here that I just googled that mentions some of its features.
https://kamilburczyk.medium.com/backing-up-photos-in-aws-s3-glacier-d379757b0889
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I liked Kopia because I could use it as a backup server. Multiple machines can connect to it to backup each. But I switched to self hosting next cloud. Next cloud is installed on my machines (and cell) and i sync the files. Kopia then just backup the next cloud data.
A backup that is physically in the same building as your system is not a backup. My backup is to backblaze, but you can set kopia to backup to a friend house (if he makes the harddisk and connection available). Speaking of connections, I’m currently using cloud flare tunnels via a container.
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@TonyBarrett and g-man… thanks for the feedback…same to anyone else that chimes in I appreciate the tips and context that you provide…
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That’s not true. It is certainly a backup. It shouldn’t be your only one, but it can be one of two.
This shouldn’t be your only one 
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I rsync from my desktop machine to my old computer every time I add a session to my picture collection. That also catches older photos upon which I’ve done new work. Each of my kids has a LaCie portable drive; every once in a while one will bring theirs over and I’ll erase it and make a new copy of the collection (rsync doesn’t work well with NTFS, need to figure that out someday). They then take it home and voila, off-site backup.
Edit; need to clarify, the visits to surrender the drive are separate from the visits to retrieve it, as it takes about 36 hours to make the copy and I’d rather they not spend the night… 
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For me, the only problem was files with colons in the name, typically log files with timestamps.
I couldn’t get rsync to properly handle NTSF timestamps. It wants to copy the whole tree every time.