Backup solution for home [Solved] (but more ideas welcome)

[Raghav_K]

okay i have a 1 tb internal hd and a 500gb internal hd.

i need a backup solution to copy the /home directory and a 400 gb /media/collection partition from the 1 tb internal HD to the 500gb one once a week, and to a 500gb external one, once a month..

i tried a few luckybackup, areca.... i found areca too slow n luckybackup confusing..

so i just made a initial backup with rsync via commandline

rsync -avh /home /media/backup_drive/backups
rsybc -avh /media/collections /media/backup_drive/backups1

any suggestions to automate the process?? and to make the backup recursive or differential when it runs the second time...

and any other gui suggestions?

thanks...

[micia]

Have you tried deja-dup?
(as root)

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equo install --ask deja-dup


It is mainly a Gnome application, but I don't think it has many dependencies on it (obviously if you are already using Gnome or XFCE, this is not a problem).

[sabayonino]

okay i have a 1 tb internal hd and a 500gb internal hd.


any suggestions to automate the process?? and to make the backup recursive or differential when it runs the second time...

Try crontab to automate the process or other scripts

see http://www.gentoo-wiki.info/Cron http://www.gentoo-wiki.info/Crontab http://www.gentoo-wiki.info/HOWTO_use_cron

An example to backup using rsync : http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Backup_Using_Rsync

if you don't know how works dd command skip Backing-up the boot sector using dd article

see also

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man crontab

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man cron

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man rsync

[Raghav_K]

thanks a lot guys

[Fitzcarraldo]

In case it's of any interest, you could modify the backup script I use: My personal backup strategy. And, as for automating it, you could even use KAlarm to do it if you find the idea of setting up a cronjob daunting.

[albfneto]

if you want to copy some files, music, videos to an DVD or pendrive, or other directory etc...
you may try the Kbackup package, is very easy to use.

[Raghav_K]

Fitzcarraldo, loved ur idea... gonna copy it...

[Gordon]

It might be an idea to bring in a rotation system. Using rsync and Linux this is really not that difficult and doesn't even require a lot of additional disk space (unless of course you change a lot of data each day)

Essentially, take the rsync backup scheme but let it copy the data to a folder that is based on the day of the week (e.g. insert `date +%w` in the destination path. Now the trick is to prefill the destination folder with a copy of yesterdays content without actually copying it. This is done by using the command `cp -al`, which just copies the directory entries pointing to the already existing files. Running rsync will then copy in al the changes without actually touching the files that are still occupied by directory entries from the previous day.

I use such a scheme for backups at work, running differentials from monday to thursday and a full backup (i.e. towards an empty directory tree) on fridays.