Backups and Archiving
100 episodes
#6186: A Virtual Disk Inside Your Linux Filesystem
Loop devices let a plain file act as a real disk — format it, encrypt it, mount it from fstab. Here's what works, and what bites back.
#6166: Turning a Drifted Server Into a Rebuildable Playbook
Your server grew for years. Now you want a recipe that can rebuild it from scratch. Here's the honest path from drift to playbook.
#6096: How Long Does an M-Disc Actually Last?
A thousand years, or a hundred and eighty? What a burned disc on a Jerusalem patio can — and can't — tell us about archival storage.
#5918: Splitting One Camera's Audio for a Baby Monitor
One IP camera, two jobs: an open audio line for the nursery and Frigate's cry detection. Here's how go2rtc and Icecast fit together.
#5848: The Libraries Nobody Thinks About
zlib, SQLite, OpenSSL, and the xz backdoor — the tiny pieces of code running everywhere, and the volunteers keeping them alive.
#5829: Printing Files on Paper That Outlasts the Software
Optar and PaperBack turn any file into machine-readable dots on paper. The paper lasts centuries — the codec might not.
#5828: Punched Cards: The 200-Year Reign of Cardboard Computing
From Jacquard's silk looms to NSA key tapes, how holes in cardboard ran the world for two centuries — and why we can still read them.
#5827: LTFS Explained: Tape That Acts Like a Disk
LTFS makes tape pretend to be a filesystem — but 37-second seeks decide whether it can anchor a searchable archive.
#5818: 46,434 Mailing Lists That Still Work
Daniel wants a public town hall. Turns out the oldest tool on the internet — the mailing list — might be the right one.
#5782: Unraid in a VM: When the License Is the Wall
Daniel wants Unraid's parity array without Synology's lock-in. The technology works. The licensing is the wall.
#5760: Pinterest Is a Pointer, Not a Backup
A Pin is a URL with a thumbnail, not a picture. If you're archiving images instead of mood-boarding them, that distinction matters.
#5759: Why Servers Have Two Power Cords
Dual-corded servers, transfer switches, and the layered engineering behind keeping data centers online.
#5705: Tape Isn't a Pool: How LTO Really Works on Linux
Tape on Linux needs no driver — but it also doesn't behave like ZFS. Here's how LTO really integrates, and why "pool" means something else.
#5522: Building a Podcast Backup Appliance
One listener wants a single-purpose box that pulls every episode to local storage he controls. Turns out the software exists — the packaging doesn't.
#5521: Old Laptops as Home Servers: A Field Guide
That dead-battery laptop in your drawer can still serve. Here's the whole playbook — headless Linux, thermals, and the battery question nobody agre...
#5252: Paper in a Safe: The Most Rugged Key Backup
Hardware tokens protect your key from being copied. Paper in a safe protects it from being lost. You need both.
#5207: Hard Drives Are Having Their Biggest Boom in a Decade
Everyone assumes flash killed the spinning disk. Seagate's 52% margins and sold-out capacity through 2028 say otherwise.
#5203: Why LTO Tape Still Backs Up the Cloud
Magnetic tape isn't dead — it's holding up the cloud. How LTO-10 broke a 25-year compatibility promise, and why AI needs tape more than ever.
#5132: Why Japan Still Hoards Optical Media
Japan builds bullet trains but still buys Blu-rays. The surprising logic behind the world's most advanced tech holdout.
Also available in:日本語
#5000: Can You Trust Google Photos With Your Life's Work?
Why your Google Photos library isn't really backed up — and what actually works instead.
#4993: Cross-Cloud Failover: Can You Actually Survive an AWS Outage?
Real teams are running cross-cloud failover drills — and the first attempt usually fails. Here's what they learned.
#4689: Bootable Standby Drives: The Ship of Theseus Server Solution
Recovering from a dead NVMe drive in minutes, not days. A practical guide to building a bootable standby disk with rsync.
#4453: Workers vs Workflows: Recovering From SSD Failure
When your VPS SSD dies at 3AM, how do you know what broke? A practical guide to self-hosted worker management.
#4452: YouTube Backup Pipeline: RSS + yt-dlp + Wasabi
Build a free, reliable pipeline to auto-download and backup YouTube videos using RSS feeds, yt-dlp, and cloud storage.