Baby node-runner needs basic help!

[LoyceV]

I`v bought a second 2tb internal ssd drive for the laptop so I can make backups of the block data every now and again (perhaps monthly).

Why? Thousands of other people have a backup, if your disk fails, block data is the part you can quickly reacquire. Your system benefits more from more RAM.

From what I can tell I need to copy the folders 'Blocks' and also 'Chainstate'

I'd just copy the entire .bitcoin directory, including those 2 indeed. But you'll need to turn off Bitcoin Core each time before copying, so you don't copy incomplete files.
I'd use rsync for this, it's much faster to update your backup than copying everything again.

also, on linux (specificaly ubuntu) can I just copy / paste these files onto the new drive and the next time I do it, will it just copy the new stuff that`s been added or will it be awkward?
On windows it gives the option to 'Skip' files that already exist.

You can't skip files if they've changed. That's why rsync comes in handy: it only updates the updated files.

[Katherine_Alicia]

Thank you! that Rsync looks perfect for what I want, I had a quick read about it and I think I`ll probably go the Grsync route and see what others are doing with it and just copy the one that`s closest to my needs.
I have 16Gb or ram and no room to fit any more in there really, it`s going to have be enough.
as for Why I want to do this, it`s because before I started out I made my mind up that I was going to be the best possible node runner I could be with the least amount of downtime as I could manage, I even have battery backed internet in case the power goes down. I didn`t want to build some janky pile of rubish just to say I`m a node runner, I wanted to do a good job and be as reliable as possible and not have to be repairing it every couple of days, which includes waiting another 2 days 5 hours for the blocks to be re-synced again if one of my drives fails, this way I can be up and running again in a few hours at most.

[LoyceV]

as for Why I want to do this, it`s because before I started out I made my mind up that I was going to be the best possible node runner I could be with the least amount of downtime as I could manage, I even have battery backed internet in case the power goes down. I didn`t want to build some janky pile of rubish just to say I`m a node runner, I wanted to do a good job and be as reliable as possible and not have to be repairing it every couple of days, which includes waiting another 2 days 5 hours for the blocks to be re-synced again if one of my drives fails, this way I can be up and running again in a few hours at most.

So instead of 2 days downtime in case your drive fails after many years of running, you'll have monthly short downtimes to create a backup? That doesn't make sense.
I wouldn't worry about downtime much anyway, as long as it's running most of the day, it's fine. Bitcoin Core can handle downtime from individual nodes. Decentralization comes with built-in redundancy.

For what it's worth: on my new server, I'm running this:

Code:

/home/loyce/bitcoin-28.0/bin/bitcoind -maxuploadtarget=400000 -dbcache=4096

It sent 2.3 TB in a week. I wouldn't want that at home. Before I set the maxuploadtarget, it sent a similar amount of data in just a few days.

[Katherine_Alicia]

well the way I figured it is that I`m going to be having moments of downtime anyway with security updates and such, so tacking on another 5 mins here and there isn`t really going to make much difference, the other option would have been a raid array, but I didn`t have 2 drives at the time I set up Ubuntu on this laptop.
I think I set my DBcache to 2048, I`v read bits about the maxuploadtarget but I don`t understand any of it well enough yet to go messing with settings that I`m not 100% sure about, I`m already outside my comfort zone quite a bit so I really just need time aclimate to what I have so far before introducing greater complexity, I`v already got too many tabs open in my head LOL
such as; I`d like to run my own mempool gui like mempool.space as well eventually (I just like seeing blocks being constructed), but from what I can tell I either need something like Umbrel and I`m not sure that would run on top of bitcoin.core OR... there is stuff on Github that would likely do it but requires way more linux knowledge than I have currently (which isn`t much!).

[LoyceV]

I`v read bits about the maxuploadtarget but I don`t understand any of it well enough yet to go messing with settings that I`m not 100% sure about

It's in MB/day. So my limit is 400 GB per day, I just don't want all bandwidth to go to Bitcoin Core, that's not the main purpose of that server.