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this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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I just noticed https://lemmy.ml/u/giloronfoo@beehaw.org had proposed the same, but here's the same but with more words ;).
I would propose you try to split the data you have manually into logically separate parts, so that you could logically fit 0.8 TB on one drive, 0.4 TB on another, and maybe sets of 0.2TB+0.2TB on a third one. Then you'd have a script that uses traditional backup approaches with modern backup apps to back up the particular data set for the disk you have attached to the system. This approach will allow you to access painlessly modern "infinite increments" backups where you persist older versions of data without doing full and incremental backups separately. You should then write a script to ensure no important data is forgotten to be backed up and that there are no overlapping backups (except for data you want to back up twice?).
For example, you could have a physical drive with sticker "photos and music" on it to back up your ~/Photos and ~/Music.
At some point some of those splits might become too large to fit into its allocated storage, which would be additional manual maintenance. Apply foresight to avoid these situations :).
If that kind of separation is not possible, then I guess tar+multi volume splitting is one option, as suggested elsewhere.
That is actually what I'm currently doing, in fact my file server is already organized in this way, but i personally don't like it for offline backups because it still forces me to play digital tetris and work out what directories will fit on what drive, and there is also the issue that some of my directories, particularly the one containing all the lossless files from my (hobby) photography work, is getting close to growing larger than 1 TB at this point (I do a ton of urban and industrial photography and I honestly might have most of the interesting parts of my city documented at this point, plus different versions the same scene with different settings which is how I ended up with so much data). Though I suppose I can just split it into separate years instead of just one huge directory. I'm personally hoping for something that can automate this process so I don't have to consciously keep track of it as much (I don't trust my brain sometimes), currently experimenting with some of the suggested solutions, maybe I'll find one that works better, if not then I'll stick to the method you mentioned. Thank you for the suggestion though!