Buddy Backups gives you an offsite copy of your most important folders without a monthly bill. You and a friend who also runs HexOS each store an encrypted copy of the other's data. Your files sit on their server, but only you can read them. If you own two servers, you can back one up to the other in exactly the same way.
This is peer-to-peer encrypted replication with the networking built in. HexOS handles the connection between the two servers, the encryption, the schedule, and the restore. There is nothing to install and no third party in the middle. Your data stays safe, fast, accessible, and yours.
A storage pool with redundancy protects you when a drive fails. It does not protect you from the events that take out the whole machine:
The only real protection against those is a copy in a different building. Most people pay a cloud provider for that. Buddy Backups uses the spare space you and your buddy already own instead, so you both save money and both end up protected.
Warning: Your buddy cannot read your encrypted folders, and neither can anyone else, including HexOS. That protection depends on the folder's passphrase. If you lose the passphrase, nobody can open the backup. Write it down and keep it somewhere that is not on the server. See Folder encryption.
You give space on your server for your buddy's encrypted copies, and the power to keep the server running. You choose how much space to reserve, and HexOS enforces that reservation on your pool so the backup cannot grow past it and your own data cannot crowd it out.
You get the same in return: an offsite copy that updates on a schedule, restore points you can go back to, and the ability to rebuild onto a replacement server if yours is lost.
You rely on your buddy keeping their server running. Either side can remove a connection, which deletes the stored copies. Choose a buddy whose server you expect to exist in a year, and keep a second destination for anything you cannot replace.
Requirement: A folder cannot be encrypted after it is created. To back up an unencrypted folder to a buddy, create a new encrypted folder and move the files into it first.
Backups are compressed before they are stored, so the space a backup uses on the destination server is usually less than the folder's size on your own server. The Quota card on a connection shows "X used of Y limit", and the used figure is the compressed size.
How much a folder shrinks depends on what is in it. Photos and video are already compressed and shrink very little. Documents, spreadsheets, text, and databases often shrink a lot. When you decide how much space to ask for, start from the folder's size on your server and treat any saving as a bonus.
| I want to… | Guide |
|---|---|
| Set up my first backup | Set up a backup |
| Store a backup for a friend | Host a buddy's backup |
| Change what is backed up, how often, or how fast | Manage your backups |
| Get a folder back | Restore a folder |
| Rebuild after losing a server | Recover a failed server |
| Understand what each removal deletes | Removing backups |
| Work out what a status or notice means | Backup troubleshooting |
| Understand what is underneath | How Buddy Backups works |
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