System Backup Options

[TWPonKubuntu]

The flash drive is IDd as made by VendorCo, (VendorCo ProductCode USB Device). Bought online from Walmart. Price was $10 each in a three pack.

[ASIDE] Yes, I have read the report about 30TB USB drives for $39. They are apparently fakes. I also find many reports about VendorCo flash drives being fakes...

WRT my (purported) 2TB flash drive, I stopped the backup yesterday and changed to my other USB 3.0 port. The reported write speed (BalenaEtcher) jumped to 10-14MB/sec, but did not remain there for more than about 30 minutes. Changing ports also forced a restart of the whole backup process.

Everybody, please be aware that I'm NOT suffering any grief about this. It is a learning process. Currently, the write speed is running at ~6.50MB/sec and it was reporting up to 14MB/sec at the beginning of the run. Because the total time needed, at this speed, is at least 2-3 DAYS, I am using the sleep mode to shut down my laptop when I walk from home to the local library and again back again each day. I'm only 30 minutes walk time from the library, so I lose about an hour of backup time each day.

[claydoh]

WRT my (purported) 2TB flash drive, I

This is the flash drive I am asking about. What brand?

Even a USB spinning backup drive over USB 3 to/from spinning internal disks be waaay faster than this, so my first thought is to check out the giant USB stick

[TWPonKubuntu]

claydoh, the only brand name I find is "VendorCo". Yes, It does act suspicious and may be a fake.

[claydoh]

I will almost guarantee it, if it isn't a Sandisk, Kingston, etc. And I don't believe that those brand even sell any over 1Tb. hopefully you did not spend much money on the "2" Tb one

[TWPonKubuntu]

We got a three pack for $30, no big loss if they turn out to be be fakes.

[claydoh]

I'd say they are, though if usable for daily simple tasks, not a complete waste.

a single 1Tb thumb drives sell for ~$100 or thereabouts

[TWPonKubuntu]

claydoh, NOT an ad for Walmart, but it does give prices Much lower than $100

https://www.walmart.com/c/kp/1tb-thu...sort=price_low

[Snowhog]

TWPonKubuntu I wouldn't trust any of those. Not a single one. Reputable stores shouldn't even carry these things! Go with a known and reputable company: Kingston, PNY, SanDisk to name three. You simply aren't going to get a high capacity USB Flash Drive for a few bucks, and any company offering such at these ridiculously low prices are frauds. Caveat emptor. Buyer Beware. If it sounds to good to be true, it almost certainly is.

[claydoh]

TWPonKubuntu I wouldn't trust any of those. Not a single one. Reputable stores shouldn't even carry these things! Go with a known and reputable company: Kingston, PNY, SanDisk to name three. You simply aren't going to get a high capacity USB Flash Drive for a few bucks, and any company offering such at these ridiculously low prices are frauds. Caveat emptor. Buyer Beware. If it sounds to good to be true, it almost certainly is.

+10000

Walmart's online offerings are filled with the same third party sellers alongside their own items, like you find on Amazon, Ebay, and the others, so it does muddy the water quite a bit.

[GreyGeek]

Plugging a usb 2 drive into a USB 3 port won't make the usb 2 drive any faster, BUT, plugging a USB 3 drive into a USB 2 port WILL make the USB 3 drive slower.

Also, even Amazon sells scam USB drives. A several years ago I purchased what were supposed to be 32GB USB drives. They were the price of 4GB drives at the time.
Good deal, I thought. I bought 8 of them, some to store an 8GB wedding mp4 so I could send them to relatives who couldn't be at the wedding. I started to copy the 8GB file to the stick but the while the process started fast it slowed down dramatically after a few seconds. Several hours later the process appeared to finished. I did a directory listing on the USB stick and it listed the file, but showed only 4GB. A check similar to the one below showed the drive to be fake.
https://coderwall.com/p/xykxla/check...rives-on-linux
I posted my experiences on this forum.


Not to mention the ELEPHANT in the room, but ....
My script writes a btrfs snapshot to /mnt/snapshots of my 150GB file system. It takes a couple seconds or less. Then it mounts the TB Crucial drive which is in a USB caddy and plugged into a USB 3.0 powered hub. I do an incremental backup to the 1TB Crucial on the USB powered hub and it takes between 15 and 90 seconds, depending on how many additions and deletions I've made to my system since the last snapshot. IF I do a regular snapshot to the Crucial on the USB hub it can take 90 minutes. I also have an internal 1 TB MVNe drive. An incremental backup to it rarely takes over 5 seconds. A regular snapshot to it can take 5 to 10 minutes.

ZFS is just as fast and making and restoring snapshots.

Come on, man! It's the 21st century!

[TWPonKubuntu]

I'm still running my "bare metal" backup, at 52% this morning.
I'll report if/when it finishes... Unless my fat fingers bungle the process...
TWP

[bweinel]

Another consideration is: "do you really want to go cheap on backup storage media?"

Your data backups are only as good as the media they are stored on. Consequently, if you use unreliable media, you may end up with unreliable backups. The worst time to find this out is when you hit a disaster recovery situation and find the data you thought was safe has left the building.

For cold storage backups, I use a USB SATA drive docking station with blank bare 3.5" SATA hard drives.

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Exter...dp/B07B3S5FSF/

Drop in a blank SATA HD into the docking station, preform a backup to the docking station HD, pull the drive out and put it on a storage shelf (preferably in another building.) Simple. Your data is safe even if the server building burns down.

cheers,
bill

[TWPonKubuntu]

My logic on this is: "One is none, Two is One, and Three might be enough".
I can buy three backup media, in this case USB flash drives, for much less than a set of SATA HD and an external drive case (USB on my system).

Also, please remember that this is a test run to determine which software/hardware works on my system(s). A work in progress...

[claydoh]

I can't give an opinion on software, as that depends on one's needs and personal tastes.

As to hardware, I can definitely say from my own long term experience in figuring this sort of thing out, is that USB thumb drives are just about the worst things for anything other than short term transient backup purposes. Basically transportation and sharing.
Sdcards are the only thing worse in terms of reliability and longevity (being able to be written over, re -used, etc)specifically in terms of PC backup purposes

USB hard drives are far superior to thumb drives and sd cards in every way, with the possible exception of speed. Just don't drop one usually. Though I do say I knocked my now ancient 1Tb WD full sized backup drive onto the floor numerous times, and it still chugged along. Chuggs, rather, as it still works after ~7 or 8 years now.

Portable SSDs are still too expensive but definitely more reliable