I have a server running Debian with 24 TB of storage. I would ideally like to back up all of it, though much of it is torrents, so only the ones with low seeders really need backed up. I know about the 321 rule but it sounds like it would be expensive. What do you do for backups? Also if anyone uses tape drives for backups I am kinda curious about that potentially for offsite backups in a safe deposit box or something.
TLDR: title.
Edit: You have mentioned borg and rsync, and while borg looks good, I want to go with rsync as it seems to be more actively maintained. I would like to also have my backups encrypted, but rsync doesn’t seem to have that built in. Does anyone know what to do for encrypted backups?
depends on what you backup and how.
if it’s just “dumb” files (videos, music pictures etc.), just retrieve them from your backups and check if you can open the files.
complex stuff? probably try to rebuild the complex stuff from a backup and check if it works as expected and is in the state you expect it to be in. how to do that really depends on the complex stuff.
i’d guess for most people it’s enough to make sure to backup dumb files and configurations, so they can rebuild their stuff rather than being able to restore a complex system in exactly the same state it was in before bad things happened.