Backup like the Borgs - with Borg Backup
Borg Backup divides your Backup in little encrypted Chunks - like little Borg cubes ;). Borgs Backup key features are encryption and differential Backups
Generally they also have an really really nice documentation. So if you want to dive deep into the cube just use their documentation. https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/index.html
How to Install on Mac OS X
When you're using Mac OS X, I think you already use Brew. So if not here is how to install Brew:
Get Brew Package Manager
Its self explanatory: https://brew.sh/ The cool thing with this install script is they tell you what they do.
But be careful when executing unknown scripts in your terminal.
Install Borg with Brew
just:
brew cask install borgbackup
Then you'll get something like this:
==> Verifying SHA-256 checksum for Cask 'borgbackup'.
==> Installing Cask borgbackup
==> Linking Binary 'borg-macosx64' to '/usr/local/bin/borg'.
? borgbackup was successfully installed!
➜ wdbook_1
Now you can follow the quickstep guide here: https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/quickstart.html
If you don't want to follow the guide here is what I did:
➜ ~ borg init --encryption=repokey /Volumes/wdbook_1
After that borgbackup asks you for a password, use a secure password and be sure to write this password down somewhere or its a password you really can remember.
Then we need to extract the key for safety, put this key in different safe places, because without the key you won't be able to access your backup.
➜ borgbackup borg key export . ~/borg_key
I saved the borg key in my home directory. You can inspect the key with cat.
you'll get something like this:
BORG_KEY 4xwvZdd2GTKnFEcpPQL3cSTaB4ewUJuCpLj9JxdGeF4ERtBcMKjcQYpfPKYZFdpy4xwv
Zdd2GTKnFEcpPQL3cSTaB4ewUJuCpLj9JxdGeF4ERtBcMKjcQYpfPKYZFdpy4xwvZdd2
GTKnFEcpPQL3cSTaB4ewUJuCpLj9JxdGeF4ERtBcV62fFiF8QXWM564GQAGSyqnu6dNU
7BCjBbiZnEsYnEJtZdYuRNsV62fFiF8QXWM564GQAGSyqnu6dNU7BCjBbiZnEsYnEJtZ
dYuRNsoVuvth6idznw2aAbKoQmzAbfzR9oVuvth6idznw2aAbKoQmzAbfzR9oVuvth6i
dznw2aAbKoQmzAbfzR9oVuvth6idznw2aAbKoQmzAbfzR9oVuvth6idznw2aAbKoQmzA
bfzR9oVuvth6idznw2aAbKoQmzAbfzR9=
Why the hassle with the encryption?
This way you can be sure nobody can access your backup with proper authentication. For example imagine your external backup hard drives gets stolen with all your personal files. Or maybe you wanna use Cloud Storage for saving your files somewhere. This way you can be sure that nobody can access your files. It's really easy to make a copy for example from your external backup drive to some cloud storage.
Another reason is modern SSDs. You probably have already your system parition encrypted and thats really good, because if you choose to sell your hard drive or your ssd on ebay for example, it's really hard to get rid of items on your ssd completely. You never can be sure with SSDs and modern HDDs that the sector on your hard drive is really overwritten (if you use dd for example to zero out your hdd).
Especially this is really good if you use those little orange LaCie-Hdds.
Backup things
To backup all your things its easy:
➜ wdbook_1 borg create borgbackup::First /Volumes/wdbook_2 .
Where borgbackup is the path to your Borg-Backup repository. Imagine it like the index for your files.
After that /Volumes/wdbook_2 is the path to your folder you want to backup. And the last argument in my case is: . . .-references to the current folder I'm in. In my case it's the other external Harddrive.
borg create PATH_TO_REPOSITORY::BACKUP_NAME SOURCE_DIRECTORY DEST_DIRECTORY
If you want to see the progress:
borg create --progress PATH_TO_REPOSITORY::BACKUP_NAME SOURCE_DIRECTORY DEST_DIRECTORY
After that it will take a while depening on the size of the backup.
If you interrupt the Backup-Process. Then just restart the borg create. It will resume the backup proecss.
If you want make a new Backup just do it again with the same Repository and it will do an incremental Backup.
You can list your archives with:
borg list /PATH_TO_REPOSITORY
To Restore:
borg extract /PATH/TO/REPOSITORY::BACKUP_NAME
To DELETE:
borg delete /PATH/TO/REPOSITORY::BACKUP_NAME
If you're happy with Borgbackup please consider supporting them, the donation site is hard to find. So consider donating them a sum, before you give your money to some twitch streamer.
Links
How-To automated Backups to local Hard-Drive
Stuff you can buy
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