(This is missing the wider point, but regardless: AFAIK (do correct me if I'm wrong) git clone --mirror will not copy dangling references & those refs will disa

(This is missing the wider point, but regardless: AFAIK (do correct me if I'm wrong) git clone --mirror will not copy dangling references & those refs will disappear from the original after a git gc, whenever that happens.) Human error is human error: sometimes people will do apparently egregiously stupid things if it's possible for them to do so, including things like deleting branches from a repository & then doing a git gc to "save space" shortly before realising that they weren't issuing commands to the shell they thought they were in. A backup strategy should be robust against dumb human mistakes as well as mechanical hardware errors, otherwise it's no backup strategy at all.