Backups

After installing so many things on my Pi local server, I realize how much time it takes to bake a server configuration by hand. Installing the software packages, setting up configurations, trial and error trial and error. I figured out I’d need a backup system sooner than later to avoid losing (for lack of a better word) time setting it up again in the future.

After some research on the internet, I stumbled across a couple of posts that seemed promising:

• How to make a live backup of your Raspberry Pi Ubuntu/Raspberry Pi OS Server to create live bootable ISO Images on an external drive
• Image Utils at Raspberry Pi forums

Thanks to RonR, a member of the Raspberry Pi Community Forum, it is possible to generate a complete backup image from your Raspberry Pi while it’s running! This would allow me to automate the process and have a failsafe mechanism ready in case I mess with my current set up.

It would be great if we could take such snapshots from our daily lives in the same way. We could just jump back to a checkpoint in time, recovering what has been lost and hoping to overcome what the future holds.

To remember is to live again some would say. However, this is not the case, not even for the Pi server itself. The sense of security a backup provides disappears in contrast to the endless course of time.

At some point, transistors fail, flash memory is no longer stable and information decays. Hard drives are no longer spinning and reading blocks with their head, rather scratching and ticking, incapable of making sense out of the rusting discs full of vacation trip pictures from the last summer.

I’d say it’s not a matter of if, but of when is going to happen. Technology has made us believe we always have a chance of salvation, but the clock’s still ticking and there seems to be no backup on sight. Remember to take one good last look to the sunset before the night falls.