Vault backup schedule

#y2023

Vault backup schedule

Daily / per change: git (GitHub via plugin)
Weekly: full backup on Saturdays, named obsidian-YYYY-MM-DD.zip – keep for 9 weeks
Monthly: keep full backup from the last weekend of the month – keep for 25 months
Yearly: keep full backup of last weekend of December – keep indefinitely

Simultaneous backups (to estimate disk needed):

\begin{aligned} daily & = 1 (ignored in this calculation as it is the vault size) \\ weekly & = 9 \\ monthly & = 25 - 2 weekly backups = 23 \\ yearly & = years of backups - 2 monthly backups \\ total & = 30 + years of backups \end{aligned}

So, for 5 years of backups, we'd need roughly 35 times the size of the vault (approximately, since the size will increase with time, and it is not the same for the oldest copies…), assuming all backups are full backups (not just what has changed between backups) and that no compression is used.

Note

Do not forget to eliminate the git data from backups. We can recover that from other places (GitHub) if required. This will drastically reduce the size of the backups.

Strategies

There are other possible strategies. This is one simple example.

You can pick any tool you want, since your Obsidian notes are just plain text files and anything you attach or embed to a note is also a file in itself.

Tips

A backup is only good if it can be restored. At least for the yearly backups, test opening them as vaults.

“Who only has one copy, doesn't have any.” If said copy fails, you're done. Plan accordingly. If you don't need the old data, and you only have it as a security measure, pay attention that your sync works and that you have at least other two devices — and maybe a cloud — with your notes.