I don’t use it but I would recommend Kopia due to its content-defined chunking, deduplication, etc. I’m writing a fork of it that allows any Rclone adapter to work as the frontend or backend but it won’t be released for quite some time.

Otherwise I sync most my files to Backblaze by hand from time to time using Rclone and client-side encryption.

I use Backblaze B2. About 512GB for about $3-4 a month. Its my secondary backup so hopefully will never have to use it 🤣

So true, it’s kinda my only offsite backup because my other copy is only the mirrored drives. Backup is so expensive 😭

Yeah it’s gotten even worse with all this AI hardware shortage crap

Same. Local RAID 1 with rotating external drives where one is always offsite, then B2 as a last ditch “just in case” for my most important data. I forget how much data I have in B2 but it’s about $2/month.

I use restic with B2. Works well

I donated a server to my brother across the country to use as his media server, it also doubles as my own offsite backup. And vice versa for his, although he’s not really tech savvy enough to care.

I want to do that with my uncle, I got him into self-hosting but I just need to save up so money so I can give him either a nas or a small server. It’s always the drives that skyrocket the price.

A Hetzner Storage Box, 1TB for 3,89€

I’ve gone up one size. 5TB for 10,90€.

Weekly cronjob that mounts the storage box, an EncFS volume and rsyncs my files.

That’s a nice setup. I actually let restic do my backups. Is there an advantage of using EncFS/rsync? Like not having to use SSH?

No, well I do the first mount over sshfs, then wrap EncFS because I don’t trust hetzner with my unencrypted data. rsync just makes sure I only copy whatever files changed since last run to keep traffic at a minimum.

Same, but I use Borg backup. Pretty sure hetzner storage supports Borg server to make things a touch quicker too. No issues yet!

Same. It’s enough for me (I don’t really have that much data) and just use rclone to back it up.

Another recommendation for storagebox from here. Cheapest option I’ve found and they are pretty reliable. I use proxmox backup server to sync my VMs there (encrypted of course).

Restic. Nightly backups to local, then Cloudflare R2, then BorgBase. All free.

Wait what? Free? How much data are you backing up?

I’m also interested. I use wasabi, for a good number of terabytes. Reducing the costs at all would be great.

You don’t need to backup the whole chain, wasabi can be restored with just the private key and it will redownload

Currently a total of 1.37 GB, spread over multiple backups. That’s two host, running among other things home assistant, paperless and *arr stack (though media is not backed up).

Cloudflare has a free tier of 10 GB. I believe BorgBase is the same.

There’s people that have 200TB Nas’, and people talking about the 10€/month/5TB Hetzner tier. And then there’s op backing up 1GB across 5 cloud provider’s free tiers.

What you got in there? Your light novel library?

All my documents, music, databases, env vars + configuration from both hosts. I specifically don’t back up movies and tv shows because they’re restorable by downloading again.

I don’t have any photos in my stack anywhere. That might be why it’s so low.

Yeah, it’s actually a great setup. I’d hope to achieve the same one day by moving all my media to torrents/making torrents, but my personal data alone is still hundreds of GB. I have no idea how you did it.
My music is 3 of GB, and that is just my core playlists often in bad (youtube) bitrate. 13GB for music videos.
My jellyfin db itself is like a GB.
I still have to make lower-res versions of my scanned documents, but I doubt that’ll ever leave the GB, or even tens of GBs (yay bureaucracy).

I probably started early with it. Decided to have it set up from day one. My data might still grow to unfathomable sizes.

What are you using for backup?

A second nas. Both my nas’ have raid. They also have revisions, and one is off except for when running backups.
A lot of stuff has a third copy on the server I run stuff on.
I may some day take your approach and make the backup nas smaller, then exclude media I have in torrents. Though restoring 10 TB over i2p may take a literal year in case of failure.

PS: the backup raid is btrfs raid :)

Heh, to bad. I’ve got terabytes so I’m definitely owing for that.

Amazon Glacier at like US$23/month for around 10 TB. It’s going to be a nightmare expense to pull it all back out though, especially after building a new NAS at these current prices.

What are you using to get it there and back?

I’m asking because I had been using this for years and only after a catastrophic event, discovered that my “helpful” backup software had turned on versioning which AWS, also helpfully, doesn’t explicitly tell you when you attempt to delete old backup sets, showing no objects but charging you anyway.

I did recover all my data after a catastrophic event, but it was an expensive experience to put it mildly.

I had a Synology DS412+ using their glacier interface to backup offsite. Pictures, personal dvd/bluray collections and music collections. Moved internationally and the NAS/hard drives didn’t fit into our weight/damage potential allowance. So we opted for the nuclear option of keeping it all on ice and paying through the nose to get it all back locally later.

Looking at one of the UGREEN boxes and some sort of port of the synology os/apps to pull it back down. Worst case scenario, I grab a new synology box and pay their hardware premium to recover things. The hope is to move away from both Synology and Amazon as much as possible.

Nothing is set in stone though, it’s a project for later once the savings is replenished and we have some more discretionary funds.

Borgbase - 1TB for $90 a year but they have smaller options. I then use Restic as my previous Borg setup kept stopping and couldn’t figure out why

Also use Borgbase for 25$/year for 250GB. Additionally my data is saved via Syncthing to several devices.

I see a lot of people using restic here. However, restic has no support for object locking. Depending on the backup source, an attack on the storage location itself is probable (e. g. via ransomware).

I think rustic is currently discussing implementing support for object locking, and Kopia has it already.

None of the solutions have had an official audit yet, and at least Kopia defaults to AES-GCM, where I’d really love for an auditor to tell me there are no issues with nonce reuse, but switching to ChaChaPoly-1305 is an option.

If that matters depends a lot on the individual, just something to keep in mind.

Proton

For how much data?

500GB

I use borg backup to a Hetzner storage box, which costs $5 a month.

For a gui interface, I’ve been using Pika backup.

I use some free one but use cryptomator

For my needs, I just use a Hetzner Storage Share and nextcloudcmd on a timer. I started doing that mostly because I already paid for the hosted Nextcloud instance and I like that it does file versioning for me and that it provides an easy to use GUI to restore files.

I have my important server stuff (docker and immich etc) duped via syncthing to an old external USB drive attached to my office mac which then has Backblaze Personal Backup running. That backs it all up with no storage limit for £70/year on their 2 year plan.

The only downside is if the drive isn’t connected for a few days, it checks it all again on reconnection.

I have about 4TB of files most of the time.

This way I have 3 copies of my files: 2 local, 1 remote.

EDIT: forgot that I also have 1yr retention on the files so in theory I can grab anything that I deleted up to 1yr ago.

How long does the USB cable have to be before it’s considered a cloud backup?

I was considering throwing a server in a shed on my property, but the shed was built before I could properly wire it.

My cloud is at my parent’s house in a different continent.

48tb of my own data and hardware.

own data and hardware.

As do I. I truly believe that’s a requirement in order to be able to say you have backups

a different continent

Impressive. I thought I had it good with my backup’s two countries away (700Km, bird flight). But I do realize it could still be you live just a few meters apart ;)

I have vital data with a friend who is also in a different continent. But we share some stuff. That one is only 16tb. And on a Pi, unsure how long that thing will last

Hard drives in an old Mionix mouse box padded with bubble wrap, regularly swapped between 2 locations.

Don’t understand the downvotes here, even just burying a HDD in a waterproof container in the backyard is way better than 99.9% of users with unencrypted files in OneDrive or iWhateverTheyCallIt. Offline backups are critical against accidental deletion among other things. Part of my 3-2-1 (not buried, just offline), I like old laptops with big SSDs, makes it self sufficient.

I do this as well, offsite USB drive copy of backups from my PBS server that gets rotated every week for 4 weeks.

I only have a couple TB of important or irreplaceable data. I’m not backing up music or shows, I can just download that if I need it.

My solution is surprisingly Microsoft OneDrive, but hear me out. I have the family plan that gives you 1TB per account and you can have up to 6 in the family, giving you a total of 6TB. The thing is, I don’t trust Microsoft, so I use rclone with a crypt remote that encrypts everything before it reaches OneDrive and the encryption key lives in the rclone config on my machine. Make multiple local copies of this file and you’re all set. You can replicate this with any storage provider and you don’t have to trust them.

Yup, once you encrypt at home just chose the cheapest / most reliable (or use multiple) depending on taste off site storage. Trust is no longer an issue.

I’d like to see some sort of MergerFS for multiple offsites with varying redundancy levels, instead of my shell script.

You could rclone mount (rclone.org/commands/rclone_mount/) any configured remote to your machine. It is easier on a laptop/desktop OS and it’s better than nothing. For Android it is a bit harder but possible with Termux or the RSAF app from F-Droid.

Dell Wyse 5070 off ebay. 2TB nvme in an external case I had laying around (just so happened to have been shuffling hardware around on other computers). Gave it to a relative who has their own setup with a battery backup and stuff. Tailscale and Duplicacy. 1.5 years and only issue I bumped into was the first external case I bought was cheap and bad. Went with something slightly more reputable and it’s been rock solid since.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters Git Popular version control system, primarily for code NAS Network-Attached Storage RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access

6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.

[Thread #91 for this comm, first seen 29th Aug 2026, 14:30] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

I bounced around a bit after Storj decided to hate consumers and institute massive minimums.

I’ve landed on Backblaze B2, S3 compatible. Add others have mentioned, doing a shared NAS 2 NAS hookup with a friend or family member is a nice ideal way to do it without monthly fees.

I use Borg backup from my PCs to a NAS (QNAP), and from there using the built in backup software to go off-site. My self hosted PCs will mount NAS drives directly (like immich and audiobookshelf) and those are also in the NAS off-site job.

The minimums btw doesn’t apply if you registered through the trueNAS partnership

The cheapest options I’ve found over the years are mostly black Friday sales on lifetime plans. Be careful who you trust, of course. There are lots of scammy ones out there, but there are also some reputable companies that have been around a good long while still offering lifetime plans. Check reviews before buying.

Over the years I’ve picked up cheap(ish) lifetime memberships with pCloud, Koofr, and Filen. I’ve already gotten my money’s worth out of them.

I use Borg to create encrypted backups on an external HD, and then I periodically sync that to cloud providers. I prefer E2EE services but it’s not a strict requirement for backups since Borg encrypts them anyway.

On Windows I recommend Kopia instead of Borg, at least until Borg gets an official stable windows build (planned for 2.0, currently in beta)

I exclude most things I could re-download like games and movies so 1TB covers my needs pretty well.

I use Filen, I don’t know if they still do it but you used to be able to buy a lifetime plan for a one-time fee that was like 50-100GB or something like that, and you could stack them. So I just bought several during a Black Friday sale.

Gone

they re not offer lifetime play anyome

rclone local Restic backup to a hetzner storagebox.

I look up at the clouds and pray my hard drive doesn’t crap out.

I use restic to:

1. A Raspberry Pi with an external 4 TB SSD at a friend’s house a few hours drive away
2. Jottacloud

I went with rsync.net, grabbed a promo at some point and have been getting 1.6TB for $10/mo. They support a wide range of protocols (sshfs, sftp, rsync, borg, synology, guides for freenas and truenas), snapshots, idle alerts, geo redundancy for a fee. Been very happy with it so far. Had to retrieve some files once and had no issue.

Storj

Me too. Have the plan from trueNAS partnership and pay less than 5 bucks a month

I’m only concerned about my Immich library right now. It’s hosted on a local Unraid server. Nightly I have a flat file backup rcloned to another local server and a micro PC at my parent’s house. Once a week Duplicacy does a chunked encrypted backup to Backblaze B2.

I’m messing around with some other backup software though. Not super happy with Duplicacy but it’s working for now.

Way back when, my Dad always told me to have at least three copies of everything, because one backup is no backup. So I have a 1TB Storage Box at Hetzner (€4/month, in a different datacenter than my VPSes) I push backups to with Restic. I also backup to a local machine (also with restic), and to my Dad’s NAS (you guessed, with restic), and to my old Debian server until I decommission it (also with restic).

All legs have different retention settings, based on how much space I have at a particular backup site.

I use Azure Storage Accounts - costs about $0.76 for 37GB per month. I’m still using an old Synology DS918+ but it backs up automatically to the Storage account every day. If you go that route, be sure to edit the network configuration, set it to only access from “selected networks”, and then put in your home IP or CIDR. Use that and an access token so you have at least two controls preventing the internet from accessing it.

Running server backs up to two local disks which can each hold 2 days at a time, but they both hold the same 2 days. Every night the most recent backup is uploaded offsite where is stored versions in a normal scheme.

I use Backblaze personal backup for $9 per month with unlimited storage. I’ve backed up many terabytes without an issue.

Yup. My main living data is on a NAS, my on-site backup is an external USB enclosure with a SATA hard drive hooked up to a Mac Mini, all so that I can leverage a Backblaze account to back up the external hard drive with unlimited data.

Pro tip—there is a docker container that simulates windows with Backblaze in it so you can use the unlimited plan in Linux.

Got a link for that?

hub.docker.com/r/…/backblaze-personal-wine

I have a vps I use for other stuff, and put syncthing on it. My files are replicated between it, my computer and my phone. On the vps I activated the setting to store old versions

For photos I use hetzner’s storage share, a nextcloud offering. Photos are browsable with nextcloud’s “memories” app, really useful.

I don’t really believe in “backups”, ie a full copy of the content in another format that is unusable unless you run it through a special restoring process. If the files are being copied, why not make it useful ? Syncthing makes it so all environments are equally usable, and the versioning prevents mistakes. There is no restore phase: the files are already usable.

I really think we need to move our thinking away from the one-machine-with-copies mindset, and architecture our usages around multiple-machines-by-default. If the goal of backups is resiliency, a syncthing clusters achieves that.

To me backups in the cloud are no backups. I could never physically get to the disk and someone else controls my account.

My 1st backups go to a NAS (with encrypted raid disks) in my garage that is 35 meters away from my house. The 2nd backup are encrypted files (encrypted disks are not practical, it’s a challenge after power-dips etc) to a storage at my daughters place. That second option goes via my own vpn which also gives me the opportunity to go out on the internet there (convenient for some tv shows my wife wanna see)

I don’t have any :')

My “cloud backup” is a NAS in another room. If the house cathes fire, there’s an earthquake or the volcano I live close erupts I say bye bye to everything

I am the same way. My backup is on the other side of the room. If my house goes up in flames, I’ll have bigger issues to deal with, like my house going up in flames.

Data is just data. It wasn’t there when I was born and it’s all encrypted now so when I die, I want the next person to wipe it clean and use the hardware for themselves.

Having a backup is convenient but it’s not the end of the world if I lose it.

To be fair if my dad or grandpa hands me his backup, I’d love to keep it and look at those old photos and videos. They hold a greater value than the hardware itself

That’s fair

I have a very different view on data, physical property and familial relationships. Everything is temporary to me and I’ve prefer my stuff to be reused rather than act as an archive to my own life.

My pictures, music and technology related projects are just for myself. Anything I wish to share after my death is stored on an unencrypted drive connected to a Raspberry Pi that acts as my web facing server that serves only static data. It’s mainly a bunch of wikis, linux/shell scripting references, some of my git repositories, some survival type ebooks and some other random stuff.

I’ve lost data multiple times throughout my life so I know I’d be disappointed but not sad if I lost all my data one more time. I do have multiple backups now so I at least have some data resilience compared to the past.

It’s always interesting to see different viewpoints, thank you :)

To be fair… if all that happens, you’re probably toast too

My backup method

On a serious note, I’m working on it. I have another proxmox node which I’m in the process of building, which should have a backup system. So weekly backups from my main proxmox node will be transferred to the backup node.

I use physical drives that I backup and swap weekly. I’m not a business and this is good enough for the things I want to save, in case everything goes BOOM! I was probably one of the first to say “A Cloud? That would be just someone else’s computer. Why would you store your valuable data in somebody else’s computer? That makes no sense!”

The best cloud solution is your own local storage. There is no way I will ever trust SOMEONE ELSE with MY data.

www.idrive.com/pricing this is who I use, 35 bucks a month for 50 TB

Wow, that’s not cheap!

Im using k8up to back up to s3 weekly

a nas at the opposite ind of the house. If the whoue house goes boom, I have bigger problems to worry about than my data

I, for one, value my family photos more than a replaceable, insured box made of wood with electrical wires running all over the place.

Most of the time just rclone pointing to the cheapest storage provider I can find and a daily task at night in my NAS.

Now I’m using idrive

OVH Storage Server with Proxmox Backup server (you can also use if for non-Proxmox clients,btw) and a additional S3 bucket at another hoster.

OVH S3 is extremely cost effective and in a privacy respecting jurisdiction far from DrumpfGhanistan

I use Backblaze B2 for off-site backup.

I recently starting using Proxmox Backup Server to back up my virtual machines.

I have Restic scheduled to back up the PBS folder, photos, etc. multiple times per week. My restic script excludes large replaceable things like video files.

Backblaze announced recently that they’re switching to everything being encrypted on their end. It’s already encrypted coming from my server, but I guess it’ll be double encrypted? The only caveat is it only applies to new objects, so I plan on making a new bucket and starting my backup from scratch.

$5/TB/month actually sounds pretty competitive. I was curious about B2, but it’s currently around $6–7/TB, so it wouldn’t really save you anything on storage alone.

Hetzner Storage Box seems more interesting if you don’t specifically need S3-compatible object storage.