Linux Install and Backup Questions

Yea … no consistency there!!!

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While you are correct, I would either add save game folders to a directory, or symlink the save folder to an easy-to-backup directory sorted by per-game.

I do agree all game files on steam should be saved to steam/persistent/$GAME/saves though. Maybe possible to ask Valve to fix this on Linux with a script per game setting up symlinks, at the very least?

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The best way to find save game locations (at least on Windows) is PCGamingWiki. A LOT of games do have info for Linux save directories as well, though.

I sadly can’t do the offline backup as my main backup image is too large (9TB) and I use Incremental Forever, which means every day 9TB would need to be re-uploaded and with only 25-30Mbps upload speed it’s not feasible. My backup location is in RAID 1, though, so I do at least have two copies and I have the incremental backups set to merge after 60 days. Plenty of time to recover anything if needed.

Unless you of course have a data loss 59 days and 23 hours after last sync… :wink:

Stagger your syncs if possible.

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Only the earliest incremental merges, then a new 60th one is produced.

Like so:

Unless I’m misunderstanding what you mean, which is entirely possible. Still working on my coffee. lol

Ah, right, you meant it like that. I thought you meant “big sync happens every 60th day” but you meant your sync loop is daily over 60 days, that is entirely different :slight_smile:

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Si, si. A data loss incident 3 years ago is what actually prompted me to finally set up a (mostly) proper backup system. lol If I had better upload speeds I’d absolutely use a service like Backblaze or what-have-you. No fiber in my area. :frowning:

Also, VMing the way you suggested with the file system scheme earlier is going well. Still mostly reading up on how to do other things, but thank you so much for the information you provided. It’s greatly appreciated. :+1:

Right, but if your backups disk dies during a restore…

Snapshots protect you from accidentally deleting stuff, it’s a form of backup.

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Risk isn’t just the severity of something happening, but also the likelihood. The probably of encountering two independent drive failures is very small, and if you have the previously recommended three it’s extremely unlikely to simultaneously lose all three.

Snapshots are good to have, but I do not count backups that are on the same disk as the original data (or, in fact are the original data) as actual backups.

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@cakeisamadeupdrug As I understand it, snapshots are just a different form of incremental (obviously needed to be backed up elsewhere, which was part of my original post.)

But it is possible to efficiently have many more of them. Automatic hourly snapshots are quite feasible, and can be sent to a backup volume. Want to see the state of a file at 11 am yesterday? Or 3 pm last Tuesday? With conventional backup approaches, even using incrementals, you have to be lucky with the timing to get near the time you want.

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Yeah they offer a lot of the protections of a backup and don’t have the issues of mirroring. I just don’t consider anything that exists on the same hard drive as the original copy to be a backup. A backup should protect from physical drive failure.

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I wonder if there will be companies that takes care of the backups for the SOHO market eventually - without price gouging you every way including Sunday, that is.

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