Your Cat Will Die Someday, Backups Won’t

Backups are good - but if it takes 20+ minutes each time, you just won’t want to do it. This post will teach you to make syncing your backups with other devices automatic and simple.

Btw, your phone can be a good storage for your backups - because you always have it, and if you’ve got a decent phone, you probably have a bunch of unused space anyway.
(Android preferred; iOS users - sorry, good luck.)

You don’t need to delete backups unless you actively need more storage. It doesn’t cost your drive anything to hold more data, even if you have 100GB+ of backups, it’ll take decades (as in at least 20+ years) for it to become a wear issue. Most people (especially if you don’t sleep well) won’t live long enough to see their SSD die from that alone. But if you’re paranoid (good), you can always check your drive’s health manually.

For Qubes OS

Create a standalone qube just for backups. Open Settings >> Qubes Tools >> Backup Qubes. Choose the VMs you want to back up.

If some VMs haven’t changed in a while, skip them - you can always download them later if needed. But if you want a plug-and-play style backup, include everything.

Estimate how big the backup will be, then go to the backup qube’s settings and allocate enough private storage to hold it.

Turn on the backup VM.

In the next window, select this VM as the backup destination, and choose any location inside /home (since you increased private storage, not system). Pick a password you haven’t used elsewhere.

Run the backup. It’ll take around 20–40 minutes depending on how much stuff you selected. Just set it and come back when it’s done - you can keep working while it runs.

The Lazy Sync: Using Syncthing + Phone Storage

Install Syncthing on both the backup VM and the device you’ll use as storage.

Make sure both devices are on the same local network. Share the backup folder, sync them, wait… Then wait some more. You’re done.

For Other systems

Use any backup tool you like: rsync, borg, restic, whatever. Just make sure it encrypts.
Then sync the backup with Syncthing the same way. Simple.