Usage of nc-snapshot vs. nc-backup

[zweiflamme]

Hey all,

I am following the steps for backing up my Cloud data provided here:

nextcloud/nextcloudpi

Still there are 2 open questions in my mind:

1.) What’s the main difference between using nc-backup including my data, and nc-snapshot? Can I use nc-backup excluding data and then doing nc-snapshot, having all my relevant data together and ready to easily restore?
2.) If so - why does nc-snapshot by default (without any UI option to change that) create the snapshot on the same drive the datadir is on? Is it safe to just move the ncp-snapshots directory to my backup drive? And can I, without interfering with anything, alter etc/nextcloudpi-config.d/nc-snapshot.sh to create the snapshot directly on my backup drive?

Probably this is also related to Auto Backup inclufing nextcloud PI image

Best regards
Dennis

[nachoparker]

1.) What’s the main difference between using nc-backup including my data, and nc-snapshot?

nc-snapshot uses no additional space, while backups with data store a whole copy of your data, which could be many gigabytes. You can have hundreds of snapshots of a 20GB datadir in a 100 GB harddrive, but only five data backups.

Can I use nc-backup excluding data and then doing nc-snapshot, having all my relevant data together and ready to easily restore?

Yes, I recommend doing that

2.) If so - why does nc-snapshot by default (without any UI option to change that) create the snapshot on the same drive the datadir is on? Is it safe to just move the ncp-snapshots directory to my backup drive? And can I, without interfering with anything, alter etc/nextcloudpi-config.d/nc-snapshot.sh to create the snapshot directly on my backup drive?

Due to the nature of BTRFS snapshots, the snapshots need to be created in the same drive. There is no option to change the path for simplicity.

If you want a second copy of your snapshots in another hard drive, or in another machine, you can use nc-snapshot-sync.

Cheers

[zweiflamme]

Thank you so much for making these points very clear! I’ll make up a backup strategy using your recommendations. Cheers
Dennis