How do you backup?

[Jason]

I haven't seen this question asked before although we've talked a bit about when it's come up related to other issues. It's more a curiosity but we might learn about other techniques with this exercise, too.

1. What do you backup (i.e. what's important to you)?
2. What program or programs do you use to backup or do you use a script?
3. Is automatic or do you have to manually do it?
4. How often do you do it?
5. Do you have more than one backup?
6. What do you back up to? Another partition? An external drive? Online?
7. Do you password-protect your backups?
8. Do you test your backups? If not doing a test restore, do you look at the backups to see if they look legit?
9. Have you ever had to do a restore from backups? And did it work?

There's a lot of questions so I numbered them to make it easier to answer by referring to the number. You could, of course, just answer them in a paragraph or two if you prefer. And skip questions if you feel they might compromise your security or privacy.

I don't have time to post my response yet so I'll do it later.

[ssfc72]

I just use Clonzilla every few months, to image the drive on my notebooks.  I keep the images on a separate portable usb  hard drive.
I don't test the backup but I keep the last 3 backups made, before I delete an older backup.

[Jason]

Do you backup your data (user-created files) separately, or do you depend on the Clonezilla backup for that?

[Jason]

So here's my answers:

1. I backup my data and system files (i.e. everything under root except /home) which includes my ssh keys.

2. I use SpiderOak One Backup and Deja Dup for data backup and Timeshift for system files.

3. All of the program do backups automatically. With Deja Dup, I have to leave an external drive as there's no point in backing up your personal data to the same drive. That destroys the whole point.

4. My Timeshift backups are daily. SpiderOak One backups any files that change instantly. Deja Dup does a daily backup.

5. Yes. My data is backed up to two places. But my system backup has only one.

6. SpiderOak is backed up to the cloud (it's encrypted to the max) while Deja Dup backups to a 64 GB flash drive that I leave plugged in. Timeshift is backed up on the same drive as the OS which isn't ideal but right now I don't have much choice.

7. I don't password protect Deja Dup but I should. SpiderOak One is accessed via a password. Timeshift doesn't use one.

8. I test my backups in that i look at them once in a while to make sure they're backing up what I want. And I might open a few files to make sure they're not corrupted. I don't do a test restore although with Timeshift I have in the past so I know it works.

9. I've restored files files from SpiderOak's backup in the cloud and Timeshift. I'm only started using Deja Dup regularly.

[ssfc72]

I use Clonezilla to backup the computer data.

Do you backup your data (user-created files) separately, or do you depend on the Clonezilla backup for that?