Backup Island Strategy

Backup Island Strategy

Process. Also a python script to execute said process.

Details

Finally settled on a good, sustainable (feeling) strategy for achieving the 3-2-1 Rule for File Backups.

All text below this line is the contents of README.md kept at the root of each island copy.

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Backup Island

🌴 A clean, safe approach to archiving your digital content.

Tldr

A backup of your stuff, safe & sanely organized.
Island = Snapshots + Cold Storage
Located in NAS, Google Drive, & HDD

Overview

Backup island is the name I give to my approach to digital archiving. It creates self-contained islands that I can copy to different places safe-keeping.

It is an intentional tactic to achieve 3-2-1 backups and keep those digital files that are important to me around forever.

Structure

Snapshots

Contains subfolders titled like YYYY-MM, each containing a contemporaneous snapshot of ever-evolving content.

Contents:

• Blog
• Notes
• Journal
• Data Journal export

Cold Storage

Things that won’t change. Basically stuff to merge & ignore if-present.

Cold storage is big. There are a few tiers of cold storage for islands of various size.

Size	Small	Medium	Large
Located	Portable media	Google Drive	NAS & old PC
Contents	- documents - photos	- documents - photos - development - books - audio - music - video	- documents - photos - development - books - audio - music - video - source - movies - tv - doomsday

Cold store subfolders:

• documents - reference documents, completed projects, etc - Word, Excel, PDF, etc
• photos - my “saves” from Google Photos - .png, .jpeg, and some .mp4
• development - coding projects I’m no longer working on - .js, .py, .md, etc
• books - pdfs & audio audio books - .pdf, .epub, .mp3
• audio - audio files that are not music - podcast episodes, my own songs - .mp3
• music - all music I own - what’s in Plex > Music - .mp3
• video - completed video projects, what’s in Plex > Home Videos - .mp4 or .mov
• source - source media for video projects - .mp4, .mov, .mp3, and project files
• movies - what’s in Plex > Movies - .mp4
• tv - what’s in Plex > TV Shows - .mp4
• doomsday - installers for various things, AI models, wikipedia downloads, etc

README.md

This file.

do_backup.py

A Python script to update the Cold Storage & make a new Snapshot.

Warning

Not yet working

Locations

• small - SD Card
• medium - Google Drive
• large - Synology NAS
• large - Old PC

Procedure

1. Take New Snapshot

• Create new YYYY-MM folder for this month
• Copy over snapshots of Obsidian vaults
  • Blog
  • Notes
  • Journal
• Copy over latest Data Journal export data

2. Update Cold Store

• Download Google Photos since last update
• Copy over any recently completed project files, documents, etc
• Save any new media (music, books, other photos & pictures)