Advice on how to proceed with backup plan after losing 1 out of 2 borgbackup repositories

[garret]

I have been backing up my data to two different physical locations since 2023 (using two different repositories as recommended by borgbackup documentation). The other day I found out that the hard drive of let's call it "location 2" broke and thus I lost the entire backup over there.

I am now one the way to find out a new hard drive to restart backing up again. However, I wanted an advice if now I should on "location 2":

1. Copy the repository from "location 1" (with backups since 2023) and start again doing new backups.
2. Start a new repo from scratch but then I will just have data from now and onward.

I guess with option 1 the risk is that if there is a problem with the copied repository from "location 1" I might "mirror" it also to "location 2" as well? Or should I be safe with a borg check?

What would you advice me in my situation?

[ThomasWaldmann]

From a crypto security standpoint, you must not copy a repository. It would also confuse borg's caching as the repo id would be the same.

So, it is best to start fresh with a newly initialised repo (borg init).

If you like, you can use borg 1.4.5's new "related repository" functionality.

[garret]

Thanks for the reply. I could read from the 1.4.5 changelog that it is kind of a new functionality this "related repository" at the moment. I will probably follow your advice and start with a fresh new one.

[ThomasWaldmann]

Note: Using related repos will enable borg2 transfer of archives between such repos.