sugar_in_your_tea , 6 hours ago

Do you need a backup image?

For my NAS, all I do is:

• keep notes of what’s installed and how to configure OS things
• automatic, offsite backups of important configs and data

Any full-disk backups just make the restore process easier, they’re hardly the primary plan. If you want that, just take a manual backup like once a year, and maybe swap them out every 2-3 years (or however long you think the SD card should last). If you keep writes down, it should last quite a while (and nothing in your use-case seems write-heavy).

But honestly, you should always have a manual backup strategy in case something terrible happens (e.g. your house burns down). Make that your primary strategy, and hot spares would just be a time-saver for the more common case where HW fails.