I recently decided to replace the SD card in my Raspberry Pi and reinstall the system. Without any special backups in place, I turned to rsync to duplicate /var/lib/docker
with all my containers, including Nextcloud.
Step #1: I mounted an external hard drive to /mnt/temp
.
Step #2: I used rsync to copy the data to /mnt/tmp
. See the difference?
Step #3: I reformatted the SD card.
Step #4: I realized my mistake.
Moral: no one is immune to their own stupidity 😂
Fuck up #1: no backups
Fuck up #2: using SD cards for data storage. SD cards and USB drives are ephemeral storage devices, not to be relied on. Most of the time they use file systems like FAT32 which are far less safe than NTFS or ext4. Use reliable storage media, like hard drives.
Fuck up #3: no backups.
If you have one backup, you have no backup. That’s a hard lesson to learn, but if you care about those photos it’s possible to recover them if you haven’t written stuff on that sdcard yet.
At least 3 backups, 2 different media, 1 offsite location.
I like 3-2-1-1-0 better. Like yours, but:
- the additional 1 is for “offline” (so you have one offsite and offline backup copy).
- 0 for zero errors. Backups must be tested and verified.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 7 acronyms.
[Thread #537 for this sub, first seen 23rd Feb 2024, 01:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
I’m just impressed an SD card in a Pi lasted since 2017 without losing all your data on its own.
For the future the general guideline is 3 copies of your data at minimum, so definitely set up some backups.
Sorry to hear, I feel you:
I wanted to delete all .m3u-files in my music collection when I learned:
find ./ -name "*.m3u" -delete
-> this would have been the right way, all .m3u in the current folder would have been deleted.find ./ -delete -name "*.m3u
" -> WRONG, this just deletes the current folder and everything in it.Who would have known, that the position of -delete actually matters.
fd -tf -e m3u -x rm
loads all cores and nothing works faster
There’s an old saying, “Unix is user friendly, it’s just fussy about it’s friends.”
Unix is the kind of friend who won’t bat an eye about holding your beer while you go and do something incredibly stupid
Oh man, even reading that hurt ':D I’m sorry for your loss.
My condolences :'(
I once lost a bunch of data because I accidently left a / at the end of a path… rsync can be dangerous lol
Rclone is superior IMHO, you have to explicitly name the output folder. Used to think it was a hassle but in hindsight being explicit about the destination reduces mistakes.
This is one of many reasons I set up a backup at my parents’ place. Was an extra $200 or so but my most valuable data is backed up there also.
I also have my favorite photos printed every year.