Backing up data

[Sean]

Shannon, I saw on your journal that you're doing a whole-disk backup of your system. I know how time-consuming that is. Have you tried rsnapshot? It's a great tool for making incremental backups and keeping historical data without overwhelming the storage capacity of your backup device. It sets up quickly and easily under linux, so you won't have to spend too much time getting it up and running.

I recommend this as an addition to your whole-drive backup process. It ensures that the data loss in the event of a disk failure is minimized, and can also give you a Time Machine capability if you make a change to a file that you later regret (ie you didn't change the filename before saving or whatnot).

[Shannon]

I only do a whole disk backup about once every... oh... whenever my Spidey Senses tell me the disk is about to die. This one is currently on attempt #3. (#1 died thanks to Android sucking so hard that it brought down my entire linux system when it decided to reboot my phone spontaneously. #2 was taking forever, so I stopped it and removed the pipe to gzip. Now I'm finding that attempt number 3 has a poor choice of block sizes based on a post I read from someone who didn't know what they were talking about, which is allowing me to keep the system usably responsive, but not copying data very quickly. Meanwhile I can only surf the web, as I'm backing up a live filesystem...

My usual is to just copy my /home partition to one of my archive externals, but I also have Windows 7 installed on the second partition of this disk, and if the disk goes, I don't want to lose it. So... whole disk backup, followed by partition specific backups. There are probably faster ways to go, but it's simple. rsync and rsnapshot have in common - and correct me if I'm wrong - the r standing for "remote", as in network required. That's a downfall for me. I'd look it up but my eyes are crossing at this point.

[Sean]

rsync and rsnapshot have in common - and correct me if I'm wrong - the r standing for "remote", as in network required. That's a downfall for me. I'd look it up but my eyes are crossing at this point.

rsnapshot is indeed capable of backing up remotely, if you so choose, however you can also back up to any filesystem you choose. I currently back up to an external USB drive.

[Shannon]

Cool, I'll check it out when I have some time.