Recommending A Backup Drive Size

[gator]

I'm doing remote backups but need to switch to backing up to a 2nd hard drive. I think I read somewhere that the backup drive should be about twice the size of my /home partition. This seems excessive but wanted to know what other's experiences are. There is a lot of free space on /home at the moment but I want to be prepared for when it is close to full; maybe 80%.

If I have a 48GB /home partition then how big should the new 2nd /backup drive be? 90+GB?!?!

Thanks!

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[PWSowner]

If you use daily, weekly, and monthly backups, the backup files do generally take twice the space of the home directory. The backups include stuff outside the home directory, but it's pretty well all text files so they take very little space. It's the large binary files, images, videos, and so on, that take most of the backup space.

With a 48GB home partition, I think you'd be ok with an 80GB backup drive. Just keep an eye on things when your home directory starts getting over half full. By then you'll get a good idea of the backup vs home ratio and you'll know when you need to make changes.