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backups (programming.dev)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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A social media post by @brankopetric00. "A backup isn't a backup until you have successfully restored from it. Until then, it's just a very expensive file upload called 'Schrödinger's Data'."
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[–] 10 points 8 months ago* (3 children)

In the spirit of this thread: no.

Recovering with the backup should put you back to an operational state equivalent to when the backup was taken.

I.e. if you've restored some files, but something is still not working then the backup failed its purpose.

E.g. the timestamps on the files might be important, do they need to be stamped with the time of the backup or the time of the restore?

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago* (2 children)

    Sure, if my active drives died after this swap, and I had to restore from the old, now backup, drive, I’d be back at the operational state I was at the time of the backup.

    That tracks.

    It still doesn’t run anything tho. It’s just a drive. It doesn’t house an os or anything, just files that aren’t restricted in any way.

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  • [–] 11 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    IMHO there is no point backing up an OS drive, just rebuild it*.

    Data is the important thing to back up because you usually can't regenerate it.

    * the corollary here is that you've backed up the configuration required to rebuild the OS.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago

    I wouldn’t, I keep all of my data separate from my OS drive entirely so I can reformat or install a new OS whenever I feel like.. nasty old habit from bootleg windows 7 well beyond its age, when reformatting every 6 months was good hygiene, before I found Linux.. but gave me great data management insight.

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