Ask Slashdot: Simple Backups To a Neighbor?

First time accepted submitter renzema writes "I'm looking for a way to do near-site backups — backups that are not on my physical property, but with a hard drive still accessible should I need to do a restore (let's face it — this is where cloud backup services are really weak — 1 TB at 3-4mb downloads just doesn't cut it). I've tried crashplan, but that requires that someone has a computer on all the time and they don't ship hard drives to Sweden. What I want is to be able to back up my Windows and Mac to both a local disk and to a disk that I own that is not on site. I don't want a computer running 24x7 to support this — just a router or NAS. I would even be happy with a local disk that is somehow mirrored to a remote location. I haven't found anything out there that makes this simple. Any ideas?" What, besides "walk over a disk once in a while," would you advise?

Comments

External Wifi Antenna

[SirSmiley]

A neighbour? Why not hook up an external panel antenna to the side of your place aimed at their place and have a NAS with wifi on it (may need external antenna for your NAS as well but maybe not). Then you dont even have any wires to worry about and its still on your network...encrypt the NAS in case of possible break and enters..

rsync?

[Giant Electronic Bra]

I mean that would fit the bill in terms of being a fairly easy automatic setup. Just rsync your machine to the remote backup at midnight every day, or you can even do it ever hour or ever 5 minutes if you want. Obviously any scheme can run into "you have too much data to deal with RIGHT NOW" but there's no cure for that. I guess the other option is sneakernet. You might swing something with a neighbor that involves using wireless. If the guy next door can pick up the signal from your router you could locate a NAS box in his place, etc. This of course presumes you really trust your neighbor...

Still use Crashplan

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Crashplan - it doesn't need to be on all the time, and your neighbours computer doesn't need to be on all the time (the one that has your USB disk plugged into it).

Crashplan just works!

Re:Still use Crashplan

[Lord Crc]

I use Crashplan - it doesn't need to be on all the time, and your neighbours computer doesn't need to be on all the time (the one that has your USB disk plugged into it).

Indeed! You have two options. Either via network or physical disk. If you do it via network, Crashplan will perform the backup when both PC's are online. If you need to restore you can copy the backup repository from your neighbor's computer onto a physical disk and restore from that at home.

Alternatively you can simply use a couple of USB disks, set up as two separate destinations for the backup set in Crashplan. Keep one at home and one at your neighbor. Once a week or whatever you swap them. Crashplan will automatically detect the disk when you plug it in and start syncing the backup.

The best part of this is that the data is encrypted in either case, and IIRC you can do all this using a free account. The paid options only matters if you also want to store the data in "the cloud".

What's the problem?

[evilviper]

Where's the challenge? What's the piece you can't figure out?

A DD-WRT compatible WiFi router with USB port goes for $30, and draws all of 2W of power.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009AO64E8

Connect a USB hard drive, enable mass storage, and SSH access. Use sdparm to set it to spin-down after 30 minutes of inactivity. Install rsync. Give it a free dyndns address (or some other service that screws free customers less).

Stick this contraption in a datacenter, under your desk in your office, in a friends/neighbor's house, etc. If you can't get them to open a port on their firewall, then you'll need to do "reverse SSH" tunneling, but it'll still work just a bit slower.

Hell, if you can find a location to put it that's under a KM from your home, you could even skip the internet requirement, and use WiFi for connectivity. You could even do without the power grid, setting up a modest solar panel to charge a 12V battery... My USB HDD enclosure runs on 12V directly, and a $5 car cell phone charger can provide the 5V@2A the listed router needs:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0079BLTPS

In any case, you'd just need to figure out the rsync command-line options to run on your home computers to copy the differences over the wire with the minimal overhead.

Re:Fire safe

[PPH]

many larger fire resistant safes (gun safes, etc.) have fire stopped power and network feedthroughs. Put a NAS in one* and plug it into your LAN.

*Assuming you have the justification to purchase such a safe for other valuables.

that's roughly useless without rotation

[raymorris]

"rsync at midnight". At 8:00 AM, discover that your filesystem got hosed at 10:00 PM, so you now have two copies of garbage.

Do not just sync periodically. Approximately everyone I've seen try that method got screwed in the end. They'd discover that they got rooted two weeks before, they'd overwritten an important file two days before, etc. You must ROTATE and then sync to be doing anything more than pretending that you have a backup.
me.

The attributes of a good backup system:

Backups must be fully automatic, otherwise you'll stop doing them regularly.

Backups should be rotated. A midnight backup is useless if you are hacked at 11:55 PM, or discover a problem 2 days later. You must have access to older backups.

Backups must be offsite. Fires and burglars will take your backup if it is on site.

Backups must be accessible. As OP said, spending two weeks downloading your data isn't acceptable.

Backups must be tested. Our experience with web servers indicates that approximately 60% of backups provided by hosting providers don't actually work when you try to restore them

To meet all of the above requirements, we use an enterprise grade system called Clonebox. Other systems may be more applicable for home use.

Re:that's roughly useless without rotation

[module0000]

Clonebox is fine for home use...it's not enterprise grade though, please don't represent that it is to the droves of slashdot readers.

This is why Clonebox and similar solutions are not "enterprise grade":
1) no deduplication
2) no media lifecycle management
3) no encryption keys that you control
4) you do not control *where* the data lives

You said "enterprise grade" - reason #4 alone clobbers that assertion.

If you want to get "enterprise grade", please consider backup systems aimed at, well, *enterprises*.

Some examples for you:
1) Bacula (open source, requires an IQ above a demented bee to admin)
2) Symantec Netbackup (expensive, IQ required)
3) Commvault (expensive, minimal IQ required)

Clonebox may work *great* for you and your business - by all means keep using it! Nothing wrong with plugging it either, but please don't plug it as "enterprise grade". Somewhere some new-hire slashdotter may take that as gospel and cost him or herself their job in the future - or at the very least look like foolish in front of their peers when they parrot it.

Re:Colo?

[Nyh]

I am using a ReadyNAS Duo running Free BSD. The NAS is in a cupboard a a friend a few houses away.

For syncing I use Unison. The initial backup was created onsite. Every night I run an incremental backup. When local drives are destroyed it is only a short walk to get my data back.

It all works like a charm.