Topic
Storage & Backups
The part of the stack you forget about until you really, really wish you hadn't. ZFS without the cult, Btrfs with the caveats, LVM when you still need it, plus the backup tooling that earns its keep — Restic, Borg, Kopia, restic-rest, S3 targets, off-site replication. Snapshots are not backups. Backups you haven't restored aren't backups either.
76 articles in this topic.
Featured posts
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Stratis: Red Hat's Answer to Btrfs
Stratis layers XFS over device-mapper thin pools instead of copying Btrfs. What the trade costs you on RHEL, Rocky, and Alma, and which one to run in 2026.
12 min read -
Docker Ate 215GB in a Week
An AI coding agent rebuilding the same tag all day fills a disk fast. The mechanism, the truth about volume pruning, and a systemd timer that fixes it.
13 min read -
k3s Backups: etcd Snapshots + Velero
etcd snapshots and Velero on k3s: the native S3 upload flags, the local-path hostPath trap that silently skips your PV data, and a restore drill that works.
16 min read -
Longhorn vs OpenEBS for k3s Storage
Longhorn is opinionated and simple. OpenEBS is modular with more levers. How the two storage drivers differ on architecture and speed for a 3-node k3s.
19 min read -
Postgres Backups: pg_dump vs pgBackRest vs WAL-G
pg_dump, pgBackRest, and WAL-G compared for Postgres backups. Point-in-time recovery, S3 setup, retention policy, and the restore drill to run today.
· Updated:10 min read -
HBA Cards for ZFS
Pick the right IT-mode HBA for ZFS: LSI 9211-8i vs 9300-16i vs 9400 series. Flash firmware, avoid RAID controllers, navigate expanders and PCIe lanes.
9 min read
All Storage & Backups articles
- Stratis: Red Hat's Answer to Btrfs
- Docker Ate 215GB in a Week
- k3s Backups: etcd Snapshots + Velero
- Longhorn vs OpenEBS for k3s Storage
- Postgres Backups: pg_dump vs pgBackRest vs WAL-G
- HBA Cards for ZFS
- Home Assistant Backups That Actually Restore
- Mimir + Grafana: Long-Term Prometheus Storage
- rclone Crypt: Encrypted Cloud Buckets That Stay Yours
- TrueNAS Apps vs Docker on TrueNAS Scale
- NFS vs SMB vs SSHFS vs WebDAV for Home Lab
- Filesystem Decision Matrix: ext4 vs XFS vs ZFS vs Btrfs
- Cold Archive: B2 vs Storj vs Scaleway Glacier
- Off-Site Encrypted Backup with rsync.net
- ZFS Tuning for SSDs and NVMe
- Backup Workflow Patterns That Work
- 3-2-1-1-0: The Backup Strategy That Survives Ransomware
- Btrfs RAID 5/6: Still Don't
- SnapRAID: Parity Without Real-Time RAID
- mdadm Day-2: Grow, Replace, Scrub
- Hardware RAID vs Software RAID in 2026
- RAID-Z and dRAID: ZFS Parity Explained
- RAID 50/60: Nested Parity Done Right
- Borgmatic: Borg Backup, Done Right
- PostgreSQL on ZFS: Tuning, Snapshots, Pitfalls
- TrueNAS vs OpenMediaVault vs Unraid
- Longhorn vs Rook-Ceph
- Velero: K8s Backup and DR
- DIY NAS Build: Compute, Drives, Power Walkthrough
- NVMe Heatsinks That Actually Cool
- SAS vs SATA in 2026: When SAS Still Wins
- ddrescue vs TestDisk vs PhotoRec
- Borg vs Duplicacy: Dedup Backup Wars
- rclone vs Restic: Sync vs Backup
- ZFS Encryption vs LUKS
- Syncthing vs Resilio vs Seafile
- SMART Disk Monitoring with smartmontools
- fio: Real Disk Benchmarking
- Backblaze B2 + rclone: Tiered Backup at Real-World Costs
- Ceph for a 3-Node Home Lab: When It Actually Pays Off
- Snapper for Btrfs Snapshots on Root Filesystems
- ZFS Replication with syncoid + sanoid: The Lazy Admin's Backup
- Kopia Repository Server: Multi-Host Backups Done Right
- ZFS Send/Receive Over WireGuard for Off-Site Replication
- Restic Repository Maintenance: Prune, Check, Forget
- mergerfs + SnapRAID: The Poor Man's Unraid
- Object Storage on a Pi: SeaweedFS Cluster Walkthrough
- Bind Mounts vs NFS for Container Storage
- Bcachefs in 2026: Ready or Not
- MinIO Is Archived: Move to Garage
- RAID Is Not Backup: Rebuild Math
- RAID 6 vs RAID 10: Two Dead Disks
- RAID 0, 1, and 5: Pick One
- Restic vs Borg vs Kopia: Backups That Actually Deduplicate
- ZFS vs Btrfs: Which Modern Filesystem Wins?
- IPFS: Peer-to-Peer File Storage for People Who've Seen Too Many 404s
- Disk Space Tools in 2026: Beyond du and df
- Self-Hoster's Disaster Recovery: When Everything Goes Wrong at Once
- You Should Be Testing Your Restores
- Tmpfs vs Ramfs: When Your Disk Is Too Slow and Your RAM Is Just Sitting There
- Restic vs Borg vs Kopia: Backup Tools for People Who've Lost Data Before
- Why Self-Hosted Apps Lose Data After Updates
- MinIO vs SeaweedFS: Self-Hosted S3 Storage Without AWS Bills
- MinIO + Nextcloud: S3-Compatible Storage That's Actually Yours
- LVM Advanced: Snapshots, Thin Provisioning, and Not Losing Your Data
- Docker Volumes vs Bind Mounts: Where Your Data Actually Lives
- Is Your Linux Server Destroying Its SSD?
- Cleaning Up Docker Disk Space the Right Way
- zram vs Swap: What's Actually Faster for Low-RAM Servers
- the lost+found Directory in Linux
- Docker Volume Mounts: Essential Flags
- LVM The Linux Sysadmin’s Guide to Flexible Storage
- Linux Home Lab Security: Planning for the Unexpected
- Automatic Backup of Docker MySQL or MariaDB Containers
- How to install NextCloud via Docker
- Find out whats taking up all the hdd space