Hello Syncthing Forum,
This is potentially a greatly redundant question and I wanted to sincerely apologize for this. However, I am in need of some advice.
Recently, several of my devices have failed, leaving me without a reliable way to sync my Syncthing data. I’m concerned that if my current machine also fails, I will lose access to my data. While I am working on replacing these devices, it may take some time.
In the meantime, I’m looking for ways to add redundancy to my data backups while ensuring safety and privacy. I recall that Syncthing offers a feature to encrypt data sent to untrusted devices, such as VPS. Is this feature still available? Are there any additional considerations I should be aware of?
I am familiar with various privacy-focused Virtual Private Server providers and do not seek any recommendations.
It seems like you think that Syncthing is a backup tool. It is not. A synchronized copy in itself is not a backup. Consider the case where ransomware encrypts your files. The encrypted files will be synched with all your devices, making these copies worthless as well. Or you might accidentally delete the files. The deletions will also be synched.
I recommend using a proper backup solution on one of your devices.
Hello @martinleben ,
Thank you so much for your response.
SyncThing has a wonderful solution to this problem under its File Versioning.
Syncthing supports archiving the old version of a file when it is deleted or replaced with a newer version from the cluster. This is called “file versioning” and uses one of the available versioning strategies described below. File versioning is configured per folder, on a per-device basis, and defaults to “no file versioning”, i.e. no old copies of files are kept.
I am aware of that, but it is only a PARTIAL solution because 1) it only creates versions for files edited on other devices and 2) it does not protect you from “bad things” on the machine which does the versioning.
Adding to the benefits that @martinleben already outlined, purpose-built backup software includes some, or all, of the following advantages:
Versioning / Pruning
Compression
Deduplication
Encryption
Integrity checks
Flexible restore options
In addition to versioning, pruning is a useful feature for purging backups that are no longer required.
Deduplication speeds up backups, saves network bandwidth, and can save considerable storage space.
Many backup programs support multiple layers, levels, and/or types of encryption including key files and hardware tokens (e.g. YubiKey).
But of all the features listed above, backup validation is essential. Syncthing validates data chunks as they’re being transferred and written, but wasn’t designed to tell you if your files (and its versions) have been corrupted by media errors, malware, etc. While the storage filesystem might provide some integrity checking, it’s not a substitute. Although not backing up is bad, having bad backups can often be much worse – the former is a conscious choice, while the latter gives a false sense of security until it’s too late.
However, I do really appreciate your concern. I am not certain if there are features necessary for myself but recognize more specialized backups may be useful for some or in certain situations.
