Backup

I've been somewhat worried about backups recently. I've got Carbonite, and it backs up my main data files. But it doesn't back up my RAW files, my music and video... that would just take up too much space. So those files have been sitting uun-backed up. And what happens if Carbonite goes out of business? Or if I need to restore and it takes a month to restore all that stuff?

Nope, not good enough.

So today I finally put my Raspberry Pi to good use and got my backup configuration working.

Top of the stack, the Raspberry Pi itself. It's a little computer that runs Linux, and is built around the CPU that you would probably normally find in a Smartphone. It boots off the 16GB SD card that protrudes from the front of the clear plastic box. But heck, it's probably about as powerful as the awe-inspiring Sun workstations I used at Uni. And in truth, that's about the last time I used Unix seriously, so this has been a learning exercise. I am re-learning loads of stuff about things like /etc/fstab that I had thought was gone forever!

Below that, the main backup disk. 4TB - 4TB! - of ext4 goodness. Connected over USB2 to the Pi, it will take a fair while to fill it, but I am already worried it will be too small. Anyway, this will back up al of my data and my RAW files, with Oops!Backup running on the PC and providing Time-Machine like functionality.

And below that, another USB connected disk. This will store my music and video files, and in turn will be backed up onto my desktop PC. I'll put a DLNA server and an iTunes server onto the Pi, and allow the files to be served to any computer in the house (installing and configuring the servers is an adventure I have yet to face).

The good thing is that if the Pi seems unable to do both jobs, I can add a new one for about £30... and it only consumes 7W of power.

So, I am beginning to think that I have backup properly organised. But... you can never have too many backups, can you?