Help choosing backup hardware

General
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Hi Start9 community,

I’ve got StartOS running on a pi 4 w/ 1tb microSD card and am loving it. Main use thus far and foreseeably is contacts/calendar/tasks sync with nextcloud, password sync with vaultwarden, comms w/ simplex and synapse, and media server using Jellyfin. No bitcoin stuff planned anytime soon.

I have yet to back my server up, and am realizing that it’s past time to prioritize that.

I’d ultimately like to have a 3-2-1 solution here, and I’m tryijg to figure out how to design that so as to minimize the need to manually back things up or move storage drives between locations. I’d also like the solution to be expandable, as I’d like to eventually increase my server storage. I think I am remembering that the 0.40 release will have options for automatic backup and storage expansion, so I’m sure that’ll take care of some of it.

My main question is what backup hardware setup to buy to best ensure that it can be integrated with future expansion/features. I believe a powered HDD is what I’d want at the minimum, but does some sort of RAID enclosure make sense (with just one HDD in it for the time being, to cover my 1tb SD card)? Or some other option? Also, any reason I’d want to invest in an enclosure with eSATA capability?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on how to best implement a 3- 2-1 system with the current capabilities of the server - and how you envision a 3-2-1 could best be implemented once the features anticipated in 0.40 become available.

Thanks in advance!

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You are definitely asking the right questions.

The first thing I want to mention about your setup is that you are right to not try to use Bitcoin at all with a Raspberry Pi, this is no longer recommended and strongly discouraged.

The other thing is that yes, making redundant backups is the the clear way to go when you take personal responsibility for your digital life.

Using a Raspberry Pi I would certainly recommend you use a powered SSD since they are notorious for not providing nearly enough power and can cause you trouble.

You can of course setup backups to any other folder on your local network. This is all clearly explained in our Guide on Backups.

My personal setup, just to give you an idea is backups to a folder on my local network as well as backups to two different USB SSD drives. These I keep one on site while the other is kept in a remote undisclosed location. These two drives are rotated regularly to keep from running into trouble in case of some unforeseen disaster.

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