Backup strategy questions.

[geronimo1958]

My current backup methodology for my FreeNAS system is a simple copy of the data from FreeNAS to an external hard disk(s) on my Windows 10 system which I incrementally updated via Goodsync. I actually have three seperate backups using this method but it involves multiple disks and is a pain to manage. I need something better.

My plans as of right now are to resurrect my old Freenas system (Intel I3 with 16GB of RAM) by adding two 8TB disks in a RAID1 and copy all of my data to the backup system and use rsync to keep it up to date. I do not want to have to keep this system running 24/7 and plan to fire it up once a week or month depending on how much I have added to/modified my music collection and let rsync run overnight. Then shut down the system and pull the drives which I will then store at a friend's house for offsite backup.

My main question is will the drives not being on most of their life have an affect on the integrity of the backup? Is redundancy necessary or would I be better off using the two disks independently (one for offsite and one on onsite).

 

[artlessknave]

why would you use rsync? replication is purpose designed for this...purpose. rsync has to traverse the entire directory structure on BOTH sides and read every single file. zfs replication only sends the changed *blocks* since the last replicated snapshot, resulting in virtually instant backups.

if you are juggling the drives around you're gonna want redundancy. zfs is designed to be online and scrubbing spinning drives and checksumming everything constantly; turning drives on and off typically reduces their lifetime.

what I guess you could do is have the backup pool be a mirror, store one offsite, and just plug them both in at the same time for your replications, though that's a ton of manual work.