You can do two spinning but then you should at least use drives from different manufacturers to reduce the risk of them failing at (roughly) the same time.
Short: It is a second Hardrive using borg that backs up the primary Hardrive.
Long: My Backup strategy:-
Databases and other imp files:
For databases the backup happens every night that gets saved on the server itself. Then when my laptop connects either to the home network or to the Internet, the backup zip files on my server syncs to my laptop via syncthing. Then my laptop’s data is backed up to OneDrive (encrypted) — this includes the immich database backups. I usually keep 7 days worth of backup files just incase some get corrupted and I can just go back to the previous day.
Library
Since my Immich Library is big, daily borg backups are not possible for 200 gigs. So I have scheduled them every Sunday morning when I rarely use the server. The hardrive is exclusively used only for Immich. That hardrive is then backed up to another hardrive using borg and also to my OneDrive using rclone. (All encrypted). So 3 copies of the data, 2 on 2 different hardives (1 is primary) and 1 offsite.
I wasn’t bothered by it until you said nightly lol. So basically it takes a heck lot of time for the backup to finish - like almost 6 hrs even with 200MB of changes or even there are no changes. It could be because of integrity check or pruning old ones. I don’t know the exact issue honestly. It could also be because of slow hardrives. It could be my repo size as well.
I used my local LLM to make the script and tested it with a test container to see if it was working which it was so I just went ahead with it. If you can help here are the last backup logs and my backup script.
What 2 different media types are you using for the “2” part?
Spinning and flash.
Why does it need to be two types? Can’t I have 2 spinning?
You put them in a safe. Safe falls down, spinning is gone.
You put them in a safe and forget about them for some time. Flash is gone, spinning still has data.
You can do two spinning but then you should at least use drives from different manufacturers to reduce the risk of them failing at (roughly) the same time.
FLASH! AAAAAAAA
The world needs those two gifs combined so we can more easily (and awesomely!) answer this question in the future.
Short: It is a second Hardrive using borg that backs up the primary Hardrive.
Long: My Backup strategy:-
Databases and other imp files:
For databases the backup happens every night that gets saved on the server itself. Then when my laptop connects either to the home network or to the Internet, the backup zip files on my server syncs to my laptop via syncthing. Then my laptop’s data is backed up to OneDrive (encrypted) — this includes the immich database backups. I usually keep 7 days worth of backup files just incase some get corrupted and I can just go back to the previous day.
Library
Since my Immich Library is big, daily borg backups are not possible for 200 gigs. So I have scheduled them every Sunday morning when I rarely use the server. The hardrive is exclusively used only for Immich. That hardrive is then backed up to another hardrive using borg and also to my OneDrive using rclone. (All encrypted). So 3 copies of the data, 2 on 2 different hardives (1 is primary) and 1 offsite.
I do nightly borg backups of much more than 200gb. The idea of incremental backups is you’re only doing the changes, and photos don’t tend to change.
What challenge did you come across with a 200GB backup?
I wasn’t bothered by it until you said nightly lol. So basically it takes a heck lot of time for the backup to finish - like almost 6 hrs even with 200MB of changes or even there are no changes. It could be because of integrity check or pruning old ones. I don’t know the exact issue honestly. It could also be because of slow hardrives. It could be my repo size as well.
I used my local LLM to make the script and tested it with a test container to see if it was working which it was so I just went ahead with it. If you can help here are the last backup logs and my backup script.
[START] Sunday 26 October 2025 06:00:01 AM IST: Starting Borg backup... Creating archive at "[REDACTED_REPO_PATH]::immich-2025-10-26_06-00-01" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Repository: [REDACTED_REPO_PATH] Archive name: immich-2025-10-26_06-00-01 Archive fingerprint: [REDACTED_FINGERPRINT_1] Time (start): Sun, 2025-10-26 06:00:03 Time (end): Sun, 2025-10-26 11:40:22 Duration: 5 hours 40 minutes 19.06 seconds Number of files: 34775 Utilization of max. archive size: 0% ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Original size Compressed size Deduplicated size This archive: 207.73 GB 205.39 GB 210.94 MB All archives: 2.60 TB 2.57 TB 206.75 GB Unique chunks Total chunks Chunk index: 113167 1402143 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [PRUNE] Sunday 26 October 2025 11:40:23 AM IST: Pruning old backups... Keeping archive (rule: daily #1): immich-2025-10-26_06-00-01 Sun, 2025-10-26 06:00:03 [REDACTED_FINGERPRINT_1] Keeping archive (rule: daily #2): immich-2025-10-19_06-00-02 Sun, 2025-10-19 06:00:03 [REDACTED_FINGERPRINT_2] Keeping archive (rule: daily #3): immich-2025-10-12_06-00-01 Sun, 2025-10-12 06:00:02 [REDACTED_FINGERPRINT_3] Keeping archive (rule: daily #4): immich-2025-10-05_06-00-02 Sun, 2025-10-05 06:00:03 [REDACTED_FINGERPRINT_4] Keeping archive (rule: daily #5): immich-2025-09-28_06-00-02 Sun, 2025-09-28 06:00:03 [REDACTED_FINGERPRINT_5] Keeping archive (rule: daily #6): immich-2025-09-21_06-00-01 Sun, 2025-09-21 06:00:03 [REDACTED_FINGERPRINT_6] Keeping archive (rule: daily #7): immich-2025-09-14_06-00-02 Sun, 2025-09-14 06:00:04 [REDACTED_FINGERPRINT_7] Keeping archive (rule: weekly #1): immich-2025-09-07_06-00-02 Sun, 2025-09-07 06:00:03 [REDACTED_FINGERPRINT_8] Keeping archive (rule: weekly #2): immich-2025-08-31_06-00-02 Sun, 2025-08-31 06:00:03 [REDACTED_FINGERPRINT_9] Keeping archive (rule: weekly #3): immich-2025-08-17_06-00-01 Sun, 2025-08-17 06:00:03 [REDACTED_FINGERPRINT_10] Keeping archive (rule: weekly #4): immich-2025-08-10_06-00-01 Sun, 2025-08-10 06:00:02 [REDACTED_FINGERPRINT_11] Pruning archive (1/1): immich-2025-08-03_06-00-01 Sun, 2025-08-03 06:00:03 [REDACTED_FINGERPRINT_12] Keeping archive (rule: monthly #1): immich-2025-07-28_10-54-59 Mon, 2025-07-28 10:54:59 [REDACTED_FINGERPRINT_13] [CHECK] Sunday 26 October 2025 11:40:25 AM IST: Verifying backup integrity... Failed to securely erase old repository config file (hardlinks not supported). Old repokey data, if any, might persist on physical storage. Failed to securely erase old repository config file (hardlinks not supported). Old repokey data, if any, might persist on physical storage. [DONE] Sunday 26 October 2025 12:09:38 PM IST: Backup completed.#!/bin/bash export BORG_REPO="/home/user/immich_backup/borg" export BORG_PASSPHRASE="[REDACTED_BORG_PASSPHRASE]" SOURCE="/home/user/containers/immich/library" LOG="/home/user/borg-backup.log" ARCHIVE="immich-$(date +%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S)" echo "[START] $(date): Starting Borg backup..." >> "$LOG" # Skip if source is empty or unmounted if [ -z "$(ls -A "$SOURCE")" ]; then echo "[SKIP] $(date): Source directory is empty or unmounted. Skipping." >> "$LOG" exit 1 fi borg create --verbose --stats \ "$BORG_REPO"::"$ARCHIVE" \ "$SOURCE" >> "$LOG" 2>&1 echo "[PRUNE] $(date): Pruning old backups..." >> "$LOG" borg prune -v --list "$BORG_REPO" \ --keep-daily=7 --keep-weekly=4 --keep-monthly=6 >> "$LOG" 2>&1 # Optional: Run a full repo integrity check echo "[CHECK] $(date): Verifying backup integrity..." >> "$LOG" borg check "$BORG_REPO" >> "$LOG" 2>&1 echo "[DONE] $(date): Backup completed." >> "$LOG"