Hello,

I'm running a couple of full nodes, but I'll have to stick with one now.

I'm thinking about maintaining a full backup of the entire blockchain on an HDD, in case I ever need to set up a new node, so that I don't have to do the IBD again.

More precisely, I'm thinking about :
1. backing up the entire ~/.bitcoin/ directory, with everything that it includes (blocks, chainstate, wallets etc).
2. keeping the HDD fully encrypted.
3. make periodical update backups (I don't know how often).

Questions:
(a) Is it a good thought? If not, why isn't it a good thought.
(b) What's the ideal process?

Note: The wallets are also separately backed up on other fully encrypted drives. So this won't be my only backup.