Is It Worth Using a Separate Drive for Backups on Linux?
After recently sorting out my Linux storage, it got me thinking about backups and where we actually keep them.
It’s very easy to set up Timeshift or another backup program and assume everything is safe because it says the backup completed successfully. But if those backups are sitting on the same physical drive as the operating system, a failed SSD could potentially take both the system and the backups with it.
I now prefer having the operating system on one drive and backups/snapshots on a completely separate physical drive.
There are a few advantages:
- If the main SSD fails, the backup drive should still be intact.
- A clean Linux reinstall becomes much less worrying.
- Older HDDs and SSDs can be put to good use instead of sitting in a drawer.
- Timeshift snapshots don't consume space on the main system drive.
- Important personal files can have another backup independently of the OS.
Of course, a second internal drive still isn't a complete backup strategy. Theft, electrical damage or accidentally deleting something could potentially affect both drives, so genuinely important files should ideally have another copy elsewhere too.
One thing I've learned is that a backup isn't really a backup if losing one piece of hardware loses both copies.
How do others here handle Linux backups?
Do you use another internal drive, USB storage, a NAS, cloud storage — or a mixture of them?
