I am currently using grsync as a backup software for my home folder on my debian testing . I am kind of curious what is your preferred method/software for personal files backup and even system backup and why ?
I use
- rsync each night to keep an up to date second copy of my data filesystem on a spare internal disk. I keep my data separate from /home directories on its own partition.
- rsync as required to make a copy of /home directories on a hotplug sata disk
- Clonezilla about once a month to backup every partition on every disk to an external usb drive
You will find that the way you partition your disk affects your backup strategy, especially if you multi-boot. Think partitioning out carefully.
Outstanding method i am impressed i really am . I am nowhere near that level of mastery i use timeshift for my system files and grsync on an external disck for my home folder once a months since my home folder doesn’t change much . And since i write quite a lot i also regularly create a tar archive of my work that i keep on a usb stick . Thank you verry much for your reply neville i knew this topic would create an interesting conversation !
I also don-t have a separate home partition i just don’t have a use for it my layout is as standard as it gets one efi partition and one root in ext4 and it works just fine for me so i stick to it .
Thank you for kind words.
Your method looks OK..
I too, use a 2 prong approach for perform backups of my PC. I also keep my system and personal data separate.
For root (/) I use the standalone program Clonezilla using the option of backing up parts (partition) of a disk. In other words, I only copy the root partition using Clonezilla. I perform this backup about once a month, but I also have Timeshift active to perform a restore from changes if needed.
For my large data file, I use an open source rsync like program call FreeFileSync. It has a great GUI and shows what about to be perform before actually running the backup.
Good luck with whatever approach you decide. Having a good backup / restore procedure is more important then what method you use.
Another wonderful answer ! I agree the approach is far more important to me as well . To me it s been about figuring out what was more important to me system files or personal data and since a restoration of my system or re installation of it is rather easy it quickly occurred to me that what was most important for me was my writing and my personal data . Therefore i decided to focus on backing up my home folder with grsync and my writing with tar and let timeshift run should i ever need to rollback my system. Thank you for your reply howard !!
Oh and i apologies if i sound a little clumsy english is not my first language .
Not a problem, we understand, many of our members are from all over the world. Your contributions are valued by us all.
Thank you very much paul it means a lot to hear that ! 
You are doing well. We can understand your posts. That is all that matters, it does not have to be perfect English.
I looked at the various backup methods. My practice of copying important data to an external drive frequently and synchronizing the external drive to Mega.nz in every distro I’m using works, so I’ll stick with it and not try any of those fancy programs.
Cool method very robust and having one copy on an external drive and another one on to a cloud storage is actually quite clever very good i like your style bill !!
Personal data and system files 2 different things, I backup them mostly automatically.
On my Debain based systems I have systemd timer which executes a script daily, that one checks for updates, and if there are any, does the upgrade, but before that creates a backup of the current systemfiles using systemback.
So I always have restore point from just before the last update/upgrade.
That’s for backing up the system itself.
Systemback saves me from my own stupidity whenever I made a harm to the system which is hard enough to undo.
I use this method on desktop(-like) computers as well as on VPS, and headless servers.
As for personal data, the backup is done automatic via Seafile.
A change to a .doc or .odf or whatever in a synced dir is mirrored to my self hosted Seafile instance in seconds, and that change is also automatically applied on ther computers running Seafile client…
This includes not just my own personal data, but also data that belongs to my whole family.
That amount of data we store in Seafile is nearly 3TB, so that won’t fit easily in a public cloud storage…
The backup of the server happens fully automatically starting at 3:00 every day.
Let me mention the file history which can be set up as a property of a volume in Seafile:
for documents we use the “store changes for 14 days” that means, when I edit a document hundred times within that time period, every single version can be restored, only changes older than 14 days are discarded - the newer changes will still be undoable.
So I may overwrite a doc with a mess, even when it gets synced, I will have 14 days to roll back
Welcome to the club 
I am very impressed with your technical rigor its one impressive setup you got there wall done brother ! And using systemback to create a restore point is also quite clever i myself use timeshift to create a restore point on my system similar concept different tool. Thank you so much for sharing your methods its really educational to read your words .
That is the downside of automatic sync.
I prefer to manually trigger my sync.
From my point of view it is the upside of file history
While it is possible with Seafile client, it’s just so comfortable to not care for sysncing, and let it do automatically. Also safer, as the risk there’s not there to forget it…