Backup overview

For those who have never seriously thought about backup

No level of skill can recover data from a failed disk or a stolen laptop. Backups give you a second chance. Whys of backup makes the case: back up, keep your copies offline instead of trusting cloud services, use Borg, and start today rather than procrastinate.

Once you’re convinced, jump to Getting started with Borg: your first encrypted backup and your first restore. Even if you plan to level up to the Borg-simple script later, a wrapper that makes the backup process a breeze, it’s important to know the fundamentals of interacting with Borg first. If you have never opened a terminal, read Terminal basics before anything else; it takes three minutes.

Once you have a working backup on an external drive, read Planning. It covers the decisions the tool won’t make for you: what actually needs backing up, how often, how many copies and where they live, how long to keep them, and how to rehearse a restore so you know the system works before the day it has to.

After you’ve settled the plan, stop typing backup commands. Levelling up: Part 1 sets all of it up once (sources, exclusions, retention, verification) in a config you write once and rarely touch again; from then on you back up with a single command. A backup that takes several steps eventually gets done carelessly. The aim is to spend an hour now so you can spend seconds later. Levelling up: Part 2 beefs up security with GPG, so your passphrase isn’t sitting in plain text.

The rest of the section is reference. Borg-simple script has the whole script that the levelling-up guides set up, so you can copy it. Borg-simple core is a cut-down version with only the core functions, short enough to read through before you decide to trust the script. Manual Borg and GPG is for people who would rather not run a script they did not write; it shows you how to do the same job by running borg and gpg yourself. Borg on an airgapped machine shows how to install Borg on a computer that never touches a network. Creating passphrases explains how to make a strong passphrase and keep it safe. Read it before Borg asks you for one, so you don’t have to make one up on the spot.