Hey there, folks! Currently playing around with a laptop that’s got three SSDs. Running Arch but that isn’t quite related. I have everything configured on one SSD, the other two are totally fresh. What do I need to do to setup one of those fresh SSDs for Timeshift backups? Please walk me through it from the very start- I think I understand some parts but I’m not too certain.

I can format the drives using mkfs.btrfs without any issues, but I’m confused about how I can add subvolumes and configure their root permissions properly to allow Timeshift snapshots.

EDIT: I see now that I misunderstood what Timeshift does. New question- which tool can I use to make a backup of my entire filesystem onto another drive such that it can be restored?

  • poinck@lemm.ee
    1·
    13 hours ago

    I have gone from borgbackup to rdiff-backup to reduce complexity and dependencies. rdiff-backup’s incremental strategy needs more space than deduplication from borgbackup, but you don’t need fuse and borg itself to restore your latest backup.

    With rdiff-backup you can just use cp -a to restore all your files. Only if you need a file you deleted ages ago, you need it.

    I relied on borgbackup for a long time, never had an incident. But then I wanted to try the new replication borg2 feature and almost lost my original borg1 repo. With rdiff-backup you can just rsync the repo to another drive and have two copies of your offline offsite redundant backup. Encryption is a non-issue, you can run it on top of every other filesystem and LUKS or over SSH.

    Granted, I just switched to rdiff-backup, but I am loving the simplicity of it already.