Re: lazy old guy asks question

[David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com>]

On 8/30/25 07:45, mick.crane wrote:
> Hi,
> I've numerous PCs, old but seem quick enough for me.
> pfsense one ~120Gb disk
> Bookworm PC one ~200Gb disk doing Webmail with apache also offering 
> links to documents and that.
> Bookworm PC one ~200Gb disk and a 3Tb disk mounted in fstab that I work on.
> Bookworm PC one ~200Gb disk and a 3Tb disk mounted in fstab that I mount 
> with sshfs and move with thunar stuff that I want a backup of from PC I 
> work on.
> Some stuff I want to keep I've also put on drives and kept in a drawer, 
> some on DVDs, some I put on the space I get with my webhosting.
> I've got an old Synology NAS with 2 3Tb disks I haven't used for a bit 
> as it seems slow.
>
> I think I've got copies of stuff I want to keep but wonder which is best 
> way to have copies of the actual OSs. That I can copy back to a disk and 
> have it boot if the OS disk breaks.
>
> Answers already received are appreciated.


System administration and disaster preparedness/ recovery are easier if 
the root partition contains as little data as possible and if data is 
stored elsewhere -- RAID, drives, partitions, volumes, etc..


I put each OS instance on its own 2.5" SATA SSD.  I also install drive 
racks in the cases to make it easy to move the OS disks around.


A good USB 3.0 flash drive can work as an OS disk for headless servers, 
such as your pfsense, webmail/ apache, and sshfs backup PC's.  When used 
interactively, the responsiveness can be choppy.


Without knowing the details of your Synology NAS, it is hard to make 
suggestions.


David