Getting Started

Begin your journey into digital archiving with the right foundation. This section covers prerequisites, system setup, and storage planning.

Prerequisites

This guide is written for users comfortable with the Linux command line and with working knowledge of an Arch-based distribution like EndeavourOS.

  • Familiarity with pacman package manager
  • Experience with AUR helpers (yay or paru)
  • Willingness to edit configuration files
  • Basic shell scripting knowledge (beneficial)
  • Understanding of systemd services (for automation)

EndeavourOS Setup Considerations

EndeavourOS provides an excellent foundation for archiving due to its minimal, user-centric philosophy and direct access to Arch repositories and the AUR.

During installation, consider your filesystem. While ext4 is stable and reliable, a modern copy-on-write filesystem like Btrfs provides significant advantages:

  • Transparent compression (saves space)
  • Data integrity checksums (detects corruption)
  • Efficient snapshots (instant backups)
Btrfs with compression
# Enable Btrfs compression on existing mount\nsudo mount -o compress=zstd /dev/sdX /mnt/archive

Ensure you have the base-devel package group installed. This is necessary for building packages from the AUR.

Install base-devel
# Install essential build tools\nsudo pacman -S base-devel git

Storage Planning

Before you begin downloading, plan your storage strategy. An archive can grow quickly.

Small Archive

100GB

Personal documents, curated articles, small music/video collection

Recommendation: A partition on your main SSD is sufficient

Medium Archive

500GB

YouTube channel backups, high-res galleries, mirrored websites

Recommendation: Dedicated internal or external HDD

Large Archive

1TB+

Large video collections, extensive WARC archives, software repos

Recommendation: Multi-drive NAS with RAID recommended

Important

For any archive larger than a few gigabytes, do not store it on your primary OS drive. Use a separate drive or partition. This isolates your data and makes backups easier.

Ready to Continue?

Now that your system is prepared, explore the tool database to find the right tools for your archiving needs, or jump straight to the installation guides.

Browse ToolsInstallation Guides