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How secure is my local backup drive with sshfs? (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by 712@discuss.tchncs.de to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Hello everyone.

I have been interested in starting to self-host, and I have just been able to set up the first useful thing for myself (apart from a PiHole that I have running).

Since I am very afraid of making security mistakes, I would like to get feedback from you if my setup is secure or not.

The simple use case: I want to be able to back up files from my main computer to a hard disk, without having the hard disk attached to my main computer.

The setup:

  • A Raspberry Pi 4 running Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit).
  • The Raspberry Pi can only be accessed via ed25519 key.
  • I configured a firewall on the Raspberry Pi with ufw to allow only traffic from the local subnet.
  • I then use sshfs to mount the hard disk connected with the Raspberry Pi to my main computer.
  • I plan to use rsync to back up my files.

Now I need your help: how secure is this setup? Did I make any major mistake? Is there something I could do better?

I'd be happy to get some feedback... 🙂

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[-] 712@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 3 days ago

Everyone, thank you so much for your helpful comments... ❤️ I have learned a lot these two days.

I looked at rsync and borg, and I have ended up using Pika as a GUI for Borg. I am now backing up my data with Pika to two external hard disks over SSH. Both of these external hard disks are encrypted with Pika/Borg. What a wonderful tool!

this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2026
27 points (96.6% liked)

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