I don’t know who needs to hear this, but make backups.
Discussion
Hey everyone, listen to him. And also validate your backups.
Gonna go check up on mine..
A, B, C
So important in this digital age.
This. My nostr:npub126ntw5mnermmj0znhjhgdk8lh2af72sm8qfzq48umdlnhaj9kuns3le9ll laptop doesn’t recognize my new external SSD for some reason. 😔
Try formatting it on a Windows machine if you haven't already. That's the only way mine would work. I don't know enough to know why the same format on Linux and Win is different.
I formatted the drive to EXT4 per the Start9 documentation on macOS. I haven’t owned Windows machines in over 10 years.
Same here. I did it in Linux exactly as instructed and it didn't see the drive. Someone in the community forums mentioned formatting with Windows, so I tried it and it worked perfectly. I could never get the network backups to work, either. I'm hoping that all gets ironed out in the big update.
With StartOS at present, you get one "data" drive. You can flash StartOS to the internal drive, then use an external drive for service data, or you can use the same (internal or external) drive for both StartOS and service data. This choice is made during initial setup and cannot be changed afterward. The feature for progressively adding additional data drives is coming in a later release.
Are we talking about the same thing? I’m talking about the backup to physical drive feature.
https://docs.start9.com/0.3.5.x/user-manual/backups/backup-create#physical-drive
No, we are not talking about the same thing. I see now, you're saying you got an external drive for the purpose of creating a backup, but StartOS can't see it. Almost certainly a formatting issue. You could probably format it ext4 and that would help. Also possible StartOS v0.3.6 (currently in testing) will recognize it because it as-is is based on a newer Linux kernel.
Hmm, it is formatted to EXT4. Maybe it’s formatted incorrectly somehow. I’ll try again tomorrow.
Fixed it. I accidentally formatted the wrong partition. Followed this video:
Can the data drive be a mirror with 2 physical discs in software or would it need to be a hardware mirror that looked like a single disc to the OS?
Must look like a single drive to the OS. Future versions will allow for multiple drives in software, including mirroring as a failsafe measure.
Read, save, review. ♻️
Probably everybody 😅
a good reminder
Back up of my backups of my backups
Preach. Remember the 3-2-1 rule
Had to look that up:
The 3-2-1 backup rule is a widely recommended strategy for data protection. It states that you should:
1. Keep 3 copies of your data – One primary and two backups.
2. Use 2 different storage types – Such as an external hard drive and cloud storage.
3. Store 1 copy offsite – To protect against disasters like fire, theft, or cyberattacks.
This approach ensures data redundancy and security, reducing the risk of total data loss.
maybe only one of you needs to hear this, but database replicas are not backups
separately, long ago, the admin assistant dutifully swapped out the server nightly backup tape every morning exactly as instructed. when needed, they were all empty, the logs dutifully warning every morning
an untested backup is not a backup, one needs to fairly frequently test restore the backup all the way back into the business app and run some critical transactions in the app to make sure they work properly
nostr:npub17u5dneh8qjp43ecfxr6u5e9sjamsmxyuekrg2nlxrrk6nj9rsyrqywt4tp inspired me, and the end of one of his huge machine shop research projects, to simply just instead use encryption to physically disperse many backups of my seed phrases (and output descriptors, and others notes and instructions). Plain text physical backups have too many risks (theft, fire, loss, coersion, etc)
for fun, I write my words on toilet paper, until I can (try to) memorize them, and disperse the encrypted backup files to where they need to go, then finally tear up and flush the paper copy
(side trip: from your seed phrases, use bip85 to generate easily regenerable HD passphrases for cold storage encryption (gnupg for RSA or AES). part of the reason i prefer old never ever online laptops to hardware wallets for my use case and threat model)
Backups are a waste of time if your restore process isn't successful. Test both.
Not sure if this is me or you. Been zap happy with everyone else with no probs. 
And make sure you can restore from them!
Learned that the hard way.
Don't know what happened but sorry for your loss.