---
title: How to make backups redundant
eleventyNavigation:
  key: ☁️  Make backups redundant
  parent: How-to guides
  order: 3
---
## Multiple repositories

If you really care about your data, you probably want more than one backup of
it. borgmatic supports this in its configuration by specifying multiple backup
repositories. Here's an example:

```yaml
# List of source directories to backup.
source_directories:
    - /home
    - /etc

# Paths of local or remote repositories to backup to.
repositories:
    - path: ssh://k8pDxu32@k8pDxu32.repo.borgbase.com/./repo
    - path: /var/lib/backups/local.borg
```

<span class="minilink minilink-addedin">Prior to version 1.8.0</span> Put
these options in the `location:` section of your configuration.

<span class="minilink minilink-addedin">Prior to version 1.7.10</span> Omit
the `path:` portion of the `repositories` list.

When you run borgmatic with this configuration, it invokes Borg once for each
configured repository in sequence. (So, not in parallel.) That means—in each
repository—borgmatic creates a single new backup archive containing all of
your source directories.

Here's a way of visualizing what borgmatic does with the above configuration:

1. Backup `/home` and `/etc` to `k8pDxu32@k8pDxu32.repo.borgbase.com:repo`
2. Backup `/home` and `/etc` to `/var/lib/backups/local.borg`

This gives you redundancy of your data across repositories and even
potentially across providers.

See [Borg repository URLs
documentation](https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/usage/general.html#repository-urls)
for more information on how to specify local and remote repository paths.

### Different options per repository

What if you want borgmatic to backup to multiple repositories—while also
setting different options for each one? In that case, you'll need to use
[a separate borgmatic configuration file for each
repository](https://torsion.org/borgmatic/docs/how-to/make-per-application-backups/)
instead of the multiple repositories in one configuration file as described
above. That's because all of the repositories in a particular configuration
file get the same options applied.
