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Alternatives to Borg backup for incremental backup of personal data? (programming.dev)
submitted 2 months ago by calcoline582@programming.dev to c/recommendations@lemmy.world
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Hello, I have a bunch of personal data - videos, pictures, documents, PDFs etc. that I want to backup.

I am wondering what is the best way to do this?

Requirements -

  • I want to backup multiple different folders from my Linux computer - it is not a full disk backup.
  • Encryption would be great to have.
  • This needs to be a long term backup - like few years or more.
  • Data - small videos, pictures, PDFs, text files, documents, etc. Total size - less than 50-60 GB (for now - but it can increase over time).
  • I want to be able to incrementally add more data to backup of respective folders (e.g. new photos, documents etc.), or even add new folders.
  • After backup, I want to be able to cleanup my hard disk, reinstall OS or restore data from backup onto a completely new system in a new directory.
  • I do not care about stuff like file metadata like owner user, permissions etc.

Questions -

  1. Is one or more flash drives good for such kind of backup? Or would it get corrupt within few years?
  2. I found Borg backup, but it suggests that backup should be restored on the same machine - which does not seem to fit my use case.
  • It also suggests to keep Borg config directory - which again conflicts with restoring or adding new items from a different system.
  • Not sure how well this would work if restoring on a new system?
  • Are there any better alternatives?
  1. If I do use Borg, should using one repository per folder be the way to go about it? Or is there a better way?
  2. In Borg itself, I am thinking of using the repokey method (key stored with the repository) - and store the passphrase in a KeePass database on a different flash drive. Any different suggestions?

Please feel free to suggest any alternatives or improvements to my plan?

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[-] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

How comfortable are you with commandline and scripting? I just made a couple of scripts that use rsync for backup and luks for encrypting that backup, plus cron for backups to always-attached drives (this is on Linux, would probably be significantly harder if you use Windows).

[-] calcoline582@programming.dev 1 points 2 months ago

Yeah I use Linux and am comfortable with command line.

I am not looking for continuous backup though. I would occasionally add stuff to backup - like every few months or so. I also want the incremental backup part - not sure if encrypting backed up data using luks would allow incremental addition later on.

I will check rsync and luks. If you have any resources, please feel free to post here.

[-] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

not sure if encrypting backed up data using luks would allow incremental addition later on.

It does, luks just adds an extra command for mounting the drive, after that it's a normal mounted filesystem where you can add, delete, edit as you see fit.

Here is a sensible guide to setting up an external drive with luks: https://comfy.guide/client/luks/

Here's a resource that explains rsync's exclude option and many of the core workings of rsync: https://linuxvox.com/blog/using-rsync-filter-to-include-exclude-files/

Have an example from my own backup script:

sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdd backup
sudo mount /dev/mapper/backup BACKUP

time rsync --archive --progress --delete \  
    --filter="protect /VAULT_GO" \  
    --exclude=/.VAULT_GO-01_encrypted \
    --exclude=/.VAULT_GO-02-nobackup_encrypted \
    --exclude=/Movies \
    --exclude=/Games \
    ~/DATA_DRIVE/ ~/BACKUP/

Here's a resource that helped me refresh what rsync's "filter" option does: https://superuser.com/questions/161766/how-to-exclude-rsync-excludes-from-delete. TBH I need to look into that more, it's been a long while since I wrote that script and there's probably more things you can do with the filter option.

this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2026
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