I’m in a slightly similar place to the author, but would love some other backup nerds to throw in some advice. I’m aware of the traditional “requirements” for

I’m in a slightly similar place to the author, but would love some other backup nerds to throw in some advice. I’m aware of the traditional “requirements” for backup (eg: attribute/metadata, cross platform, restore testing, etc), but in modern usage, I’ve discovered a split (and lean towards “cloud first”). It boils down to “active” files v. “passive” data. I found this when testing rclone around preserving executable bits and trying to back up “active” (`chmod +x`) git working directories. It was a mess as all shell scripts lost permissions, and especially frustrating because backing up Git working directories is like kindof useless, but also very useful for those times when something goes wrong. However, when backing up my MP3 rips or family videos (or large video editing projects), I’m really just needing passive blobs, not bit+attribute duplicate restores, especially when the local computer is effectively a moderately thin client compared to an exact duplicate of all possible data that I’ve backed up to a cloud provider (eg: rsync.net in my case). Also there are tiers of cost and accessibility that aren’t necessarily managed well with most modern backup software. I’ve settled on rsync.net for bulk “warm” access, and syncthing with a few local raspberry pi’s, and all local computers/phones as kind of a “hot” replacement for “Documents” directory. I had to do a moderately complete backup with “restic“ from one local HD to another on my desktop and that worked well for being able to mount snapshots and pull files out, but it all feels like a lot of overhead compared to what I’m really shooting for. Further problems are the general unreliability of fuse/sshfs-mounted filesystems, as “slow” file access for some things is quite acceptable, but unreliable or hanging on individual file access gets real old real quick. So it boils down towards the far away end of the backup “cone” being S3-glacier-ish (cheap-ish), and mostly blob data with no extended attributes needed. Mid-tier is rsync/warm, mostly blob-ish shared between multiple systems, along with some kinds of per-device system restore capabilities (or home dir restore capabilities), and near/hot is Syncthing, and a local NAS of everything if possible. Modulo local device/hardware management, and attempting to reduce any administrative overhead, especially for casual/non-primary users of the same system. It doesn’t feel like nirvana, am I missing any gaps in thought here? Anyone else have good experiences or suggestions on something somewhat comprehensive between “do nothing, let the cloud sort it out” and “be prepared, have your own local and remote backup/transfer/restore processes”?