Not all data is equal. I backup things i absolutely can not lose and yolo everything else. My love for this hobby does not extend to buying racks of hard drives.
this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2026
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True words of wisdom here from a self hosting perspective.
Same, my unraid server is over 40 tb but I only have ~1.5 tb of critical data, being my immich photos and some files. I have an on site and off site raspberry pi with 4tb nvme SSD for nightly backups
For me, I only back up data I can't replace, which is a small subset of the capacity of my NAS. Personal data like photos, password manager databases, personal documents, etc. get locally encrypted, then synced to a cloud storage provider. I have my encryption keys stored in a location that's automatically synced to various personal devices and one off-site location maintained by a trusted party. I have the backups and encryption key sync configured to keep n old versions of the files (where the value of n depends on how critical the file is).
Incremental synchronization really keeps the bandwidth and storage costs down and the amount of data I am backing up makes file level backup a very reasonable option.
If I wanted to back up everything, I would set up a second system off-site and run backups over a secure tunnel.
Personally I deal with it by prioritizing the data.
I have about the same total size Unraid NAS as you, but the vast majority is downloaded or ripped media that would be annoying to replace, but not disastrous.
My personal photos, videos and other documents which are irreplaceable only make up a few TB, which is pretty managable to maintain true local and cloud backups of.
Not sure if that helps at all in your situation.
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I don't. Of my 120tb, I only care about the 4tb of personal data and I push that to a cloud backup. The rest can just be downloaded again.
Do you have logs or software that keeps track of what you need to redownload? A big stress for me with that method is remembering or keeping track of what is lost when I and software can't even see the filesystem anymore.
If you can't remember what you lost, did you really need it to begin with?
Unless it's personal memories of course.
I can't remember the name of an excel spreadsheet I created years ago, which has continually matured with lots of changes. I often have to search for it of the many I have for different purposes.
Trusting your memory is a naive, amateur approach.
If the spreadsheet is important it sounds like it would be part of the 4 GB that was backed up.
The key here being that you actually remember the file exists, because it's important. Some other random spreadsheet you don't even remember exists because you haven't needed it since forever is probably not all that important to backup.
If you loose something without ever realizing you lost it, it was not important so there would be no reason to make a backup.
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I don't know of a pre-wrapped utility to do that, but assuming that this is a Linux system, here's a simple bash script that'd do it.
#!/bin/bash
# Set this. Path to a new, not-yet-existing directory that will retain a copy of a list
# of your files. You probably don't actually want this in /tmp, or
# it'll be wiped on reboot.
file_list_location=/tmp/storage-history
# Set this. Path to location with files that you want to monitor.
path_to_monitor=path-to-monitor
# If the file list location doesn't yet exist, create it.
if [[ ! -d "$file_list_location" ]]; then
mkdir "$file_list_location"
git -C "$file_list_location" init
fi
# in case someone's checked out things at a different time
git -C "$file_list_location" checkout master
find "$path_to_monitor"|sort>"$file_list_location/files.txt"
git -C "$file_list_location" add "$file_list_location/files.txt"
git -C "$file_list_location" commit -m "Updated file list for $(date)"
That'll drop a text file at /tmp/storage-history/files.txt with a list of the files at that location, and create a git repo at /tmp/storage-history that will contain a history of that file.
When your drive array kerplodes or something, your files.txt file will probably become empty if the mount goes away, but you'll have a git repository containing a full history of your list of files, so you can go back to a list of the files there as they existed at any historical date.
Run that script nightly out of your crontab or something ($ crontab -e to edit your crontab).
As the script says, you need to choose a file_list_location (not /tmp, since that'll be wiped on reboot), and set path_to_monitor to wherever the tree of files is that you want to keep track of (like, /mnt/file_array or whatever).
You could save a bit of space by adding a line at the end to remove the current files.txt after generating the current git commit if you want. The next run will just regenerate files.txt anyway, and you can just use git to regenerate a copy of the file at for any historical day you want. If you're not familiar with git, $ git log to find the hashref for a given day, $ git checkout <hashref> to move where things were on that day.
EDIT: Moved the git checkout up.
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In my case, for Linux ISOs, is only needed to login in my usual private trackers and re-download my leeched torrents. For more niche content, like old school TV shows in local language, I would rely in the community. For even more niche content, like tankoubons only available at the time on DD services, I have a specific job but also relying in the same back up provider that I'm using for personal data.
Also, as it's important to remind to everyone, you must encrypt your backup no matter where you store it.
My *arrstack DBs are part of my backed up portion, so they'll remember what I have downloaded in my non-backed up portion.
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I've been following this post since the first comment.
And I have just put together my own RAID1 1TB NAS. And I did not think that 1TB will serve me forever, more like "a good start".
But the numbers I've been seeing in here... you guys are nuts 😆
Well, first while raid is great, it's not a replacement for backups. Raid is mostly useful if uptime is imperative, but does not protect against user errors, software errors, fs corruption, ransomware or a power surge killing the entire array.
Since uptime isn't an issue on my home nas, instead of parity I simply have cold backups which (supposedly) I plug in from time to time to scrub the filesystems.
If a online drive dies I can simply restore it from backup and accept the downtime. For my anime I have simply one single backup, but or my most important files I have 2 backups just in case one fails. (Unfornately both onsite)
On the other hand, for a client of mine's server where uptime is imperative, in addiction to raid I have 2 automatic daily backups (which ideally one should be offsite but isn't, at least they are in different floors of the same building).
You'll think I'm crazy, and you're not wrong, but: sneakernet.
Every time I run the numbers on cloud providers, I'm stuck with one conclusion: shit's expensive. Way more expensive than the cost of a few hard drives when calculated over the life expectancy of those drives.
So I use hard drives. I periodically copy everything to external, encrypted drives. Then I put those drives in a safe place off-site.
On top of that, I run much leaner and more frequent backups of more dynamic and important data. I offload those smaller backups to cloud services. Over the years I've picked up a number of lifetime cloud storage subscriptions from not-too-shady companies, mostly from Black Friday sales. I've already gotten my money's worth out of most of them and it doesn't look like they're going to fold anytime soon. There are a lot of shady companies out there so you should be skeptical when you see "lifetime" sales, but every now and then a legit deal pops up.
I will also confess that a lot of my data is not truly backed up at all. If it's something I could realistically recreate or redownload, I don't bother spending much of my own time and money backing it up unless it's, like, really really important to me. Yes, it will be a pain in the ass when shit eventually hits the fan. It's a calculated risk.
I am watching this thread with great interest, hoping to be swayed into something more modern and robust.
That is old-old-school. It works tho. You have to be a bit scheduled about it, to encompass current and future important data. IIRC AWS created a 100 petabyte drive and a truck to haul it around to basically do the same thiing, just in much larger amounts.
Sneakernet crew here too. My work offsite backup is in my backpack. Few times per week I do a sync which takes a few minutes and take it home again. (The sync archives old versions of files and the drive is encrypted.)
We tried several cloud-based solutions and they were all rather expensive or just plain hard to run to completion or both.
I have 3 main NASes
78TB (52TB usable) hot storage. ZFS1
160TB (120TB) warm storage ZFS2
48TB (24TB) off site. ZFS mirror
I rsync every day from hot to off site.
And once a month I turn on my warm storage and sync it.
Warm and hot storage is at the same location.
Off site storage is with a family friend who I trust. Data isn't encrypted aside from in transit. That's something else I'd like to mess with later.
Core vital data is sprinkled around different continents with about 10TB. I have 2 nodes in 2 countries for vital data. These are with family.
I think I have 5 total servers.
Cost is a lot obviously, but pieced together over several years.
The world will end before my data gets destroyed.
But would your data survive a nearby gamma-ray burst?
Amateurs not keeping at least one backup off-planet SMH
I put a QNAP on the ISS. Expensive, but I sleep soundly.
Backup to 2nd nas.
Important stuff gets backed up to cloud storage. Whatever is cheapest.
In my case Synology c2 cloud was cheapest.
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I have a 120TB unraid server at home, and a 40TB unraid server at work. Both use 2 x parity disks.
The critical work stuff backs up to home, and the critical home stuff backs up to work.
The media is disposable.
Both servers then back up to Crashplan on separate accounts - work uses the Australian server on a business account, home used the US server on a personal account.
I figure I should be safe unless Australia and the US are nuked simultaneously.... At which point my data integrity is probably not the most pressing issue.
why is your work stuff at home and why is your personal stuff at work ಠ_ಠ
Yeah I guess it probably makes more sense when it's my business.... Maybe not if you're an employee at some corporate randomly hosting backups of your dog photos.
I dunno. At a big company they probably won't notice an extra TB of storage cost... So long as you're discrete with the transfers.
I'm not sure if I qualify as a 'larger local hoster' but I would go through your 20 TB and decide what really is important enough to backup in case the wheels fall off. Linux ISOs, those can be re-downloaded, although it would take a bit of time. The things that can't be readily downloaded such as my music collection that I have been accumulating for decades, converted to flac, and meticulously tagged, can't be re-downloaded. So that is one of my priorities to back up. Pictures, business documents, personal documents, can't be re-downloaded, so that goes on the 'must back up' list....and so on. Just cull out what is and isn't replaceable. I would bet that once you do that, your 20 TB will be a bit more slim, and you're not trying to push 20TB up the pipe to a cloud backup.
I use BackBlaze's Personal, unlimited tier for $99 USD per year, which is a pretty sweet deal. One thing about Backblaze to remember is that the drives being backed up must be physically connected to the PC doing the backup/uploading. I get around that because I have a hot swap bay on my main PC, but there are other methods and software that will masquerade your NAS or other as a physically connected drive.
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Lto tape. But I only have 15tb
It quickly becomes cost effective when you actually need the data to be safe. Far easier to have off site backups. I have never had a problem , but I like to have offline backup. Most of the time my data is static. So I am only backing up projects files ans changes for the most part.
If you have 40+ tb of dynamic data I can’t help there.
Edit: I buy used drives that are usually 2 generations old, so I got lto-5 drives when lto 7 was new. The used drives may be less reliable but used drives can be 1/10th the price of the newest ones.
A second offsite NAS (my old one) with the same capacity for the larger files
Backblaze B2 and a Hezner storage box for Really Important stuff.
Okay Mr. Money Bags
It’s literally a Raspberry pi 3B+ and a USB hard drive in a plastic storage box at my parents house 😅
Backblaze offers unlimited data on a single computer, $99/year.
There might be some fine print that excludes your setup but might be worth investigating.
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Recently helped someone get set up with backblaze B2 using Kopia, which turned out fairly affordable. It compresses and de-duplicates leading to very little storage use, and it encrypts so that Backblaze can't read the data.
Kopia connects to it directly. To restore, you just install Kopia again and enter the same connection credentials to access the backup repository.
My personal solution is a second NAS off-site, which periodically wakes up and connects to mine via VPN, during that window Kopia is set to update my backups.
Kopia figures out what parts of the filesystem has changed very quickly, and only those changes are transferred over during each update.
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What's your recovery needs?
It's ok to take 6 months to backup to a cloud provider, but do you need all your data to be recovered in a short period of time? If so, cloud isn't the solution, you'd need a duplicate set of drives nearby (but not close enough for the same flood, fire, etc.
But, if you're ok waiting for the data to download again (and check the storage provider costs for that specific scenario), then your main factor is how much data changes after that initial 1st upload.
Sorry. Shortly after posting this and the initial QA I left for a trip.
I could definitely wait those time periods for a first backup and a restore, since I assume it'll be a once in 10 year at worst situation. Data changes after the first upload should be show enough to keep up.
entire nas (~24TB used) is replicated to another nas in another building (2 actually). i like having 3 copies.
As someone who has experienced double failure twice in my lifetime, I seriously recommend doing backups.
The problem is that the only serious backup solution is another HDD for this size. A robot array for tapes or worm drives is probably out of budget.
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