

I have no explanation. Really shocked me that idle was that low, and I ran the meter on it for a week with it mostly just sitting there, and some file copy action. I could see in the power chart when I copied files, then it would fall back to 12w. Nuts.
I have to make a config change soon (add a drive and a fan), I’ll put the meter back on for a week.
As others have said, use tools like borg and restic.
Shop around for cloud storage with good pricing for your use-case. Many charge for different usage patterns, like restoring data or uploading.
Check out storj.io, I like their pricing - they charge for downloading/restore (IIRC), and I figure that’s a cost I can live with if I need to restore.
Otherwise I keep 3 local copies of data:
1 is live, and backed up to storj.io
2 is mirrored from 1 every other week
3 is mirrored from 1 every other week, opposite 2
This works for my use-case, where I’m concerned about local failures and mistakes (and don’t trust my local stores enough to use a backup tool), but my data doesn’t change a lot in a week. If I were to lose 1 week of changes, it would be a minor issue. And I’m trusting my cloud backup to be good (I do test it quarterly, and do a single file restore test monthly).
This isn’t an ideal (or even recommended approach), just works with the storages I currently have, and my level of trust of them.