I have about 600GB to backup and am using B2 as the provider. While this works just fine, it takes ages to complete because of the very slow upload link that I have where my data is located (ADSL, max 1Mb/s)
I thought that maybe I could do a backup with Duplicati to a mounted drive, then move that drive to a location where I have better upload speed and copy over the files to the B2 bucket.
This way, the initial setup is much faster and the rest of the life of the backup can be done on the slow upload link that is enough to perform day to day maintenance.
Is this possible? Are there any traps that I should avoid when doing so?
That’s a perfectly viable option You can do the full backup anywhere you to. Once completed you can move it to any other provider as long as you copy every file over.
After the files are copied to B2 you can simply change the backup job destination and continue the backups. You shouldn’t need to repair/recreate the database if you change the existing job. If you create a new backup job you’ll need to initialise a database recreation.
Yes, and rclone is an excellent tool for keeping the B2 destination in sync with the local backup destination, until you are ready back up straight to B2.
If you use rclone, make sure you use the --b2-hard-delete option. Otherwise rclone will mark locally deleted files as “hidden” in the B2 bucket and this will confuse Duplicati.
I learned this when I was using rclone to sync my S3 bucket with B2, in preparation to flip over to B2 exclusively.
You can do the full backup anywhere you to. Once completed you can move it to any other provider as long as you copy every file over.