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Comment by seymon

1 day ago

I am already using zfs on my NAS where I want my backups to be. But I didn't consider it for backups till now

You can consider something like syncthing to get the important files onto your NAS, and then use ZFS snapshots and replication via syncoid/sanoid to do the actual backing up.

  • Or install ZFS also on end devices, and do ZFS replication to NAS, which is what I do. I have ZFS on my laptop, snapshot data every 30 minutes, and replicate them. Those snapshots are very useful, as sometimes I accidentally delete data.

    With ZFS, all file system is replicated. The backup will be consistent, which is not the case with file level backup. With latter, you have to also worry about lock files, permissions, etc. The restore will be more natural and quick with ZFS.

    • I can't speak to zfs but I don't find btrfs snapshots to be a viable replacement for borgbackup. To your filesystem consistency point I snapshot, back the snapshot up with borg, and then delete the snapshot. I never run borg against a writable subvolume.