ZFS

ZFS is a cool filesystem that offers enterprise data integrity, and is a alternative to btrfs and ext4.

It uses a drive/foldername@backupname format.
ex: photos-drive/photos@2026-07-16-backup where:

• photos-drive is pool
• photos is dataset
• 2026-07-16-backup is snapshot.

Management

Take snapshot

# each snapshot has to have a unique name
zfs snapshot photos-drive/photos@2026-07-16-backup

List snapshot

zfs list -t snapshot photos-drive/photos

Delete snapshot

zfs destroy photos-drive/photos@2026-07-16-backup

Restore from snapshot

zfs rollback -r photos-drive/photos@2026-07-16-backup
# any newer snapshots get deleted in order to restore!!!

Local ZFS send

# send from one drive to another. can be done over network similarly.
zfs send photos-drive/photos@2026-07-16-backup | zfs receive restore/data

Network

Files can be transferred easily over network with syncoid. Install:

sudo apt install syncoid

Then setup a ssh key

ssh-keygen #generate a new key
ssh-copy-id user@IP

Then transfer

# by default makes a zfs snapshot on run, use --no-sync-snap to disable this (make sure to snapshot yourself!)
syncoid photos-drive/photos user@IP:backups-disk/photos --no-sync-snap # backups-disk/photos is second location