[PLUG] Favorite Backup Systems?

John Jason Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Fri May 21 15:33:01 UTC 2010


On Fri, 21 May 2010 07:54:20 -0700
Tim Wescott <tim at wescottdesign.com> dijo:

>I'm way bad -- it's been ages since I've backed up my machine, and my 
>it's gotten big in there!  I'm backing up now just by copying to CD -- 
>but those CD's have gotten awfully small now that customers are
>sending me multiple 100-MB files of data.
>
>Ubuntu has a bunch of backup options; I'd like to choose one that does 
>what I need without having so many cool options that I spend a year 
>experimenting with all the wrong ways to do it before I hit on the one 
>that actually works.
>
>What is your preferred backup system?  I'd like something that
>supports a scheme that lets me do a monthly complete backup with daily 
>incrementals.  I'd like to be able to tag certain directories as
>"don't back up".  Something that could backup to a remote disk would
>be nice, but not essential.  Automatic backup, at least for the
>incrementals, would be especially nice, as I'm absent minded. 
>
>Also nice would be something that lets me plug a big USB disk into the 
>cruddy old laptop that I'm using as a server (stupid, I know -- I'll 
>replace it when it dies).  I'm thinking that one way or another I want 
>to use a two- or three-disk backup system, so that if any one of them 
>dies I'll be left with a fairly recent image of my computer.

The first step in figuring out a backup strategy is to decide on the
media. I.e., will you be backing up to an external USB disk, a network
disk, optical media, over the internet to a web based service, or what?

The second step is to decide how often you want to back up and whether
you want it automated or not. 

The reason you do steps one and two first is because most software
packages were originally designed for one type of storage device and,
while the current version of the software may be able to use various
devices, you'll find a better fit if you choose software that is
optimized for the media you have chosen. Ditto for the frequency of the
backup, as some packages have a nice built-in GUI scheduler, while
others require Cron. I once tried to figure out Cron and it was
hopeless - incredibly powerful tool, but equally difficult to learn.

I am currently using an external hard drive that swaps in and out with
the optical drive in my laptop. Most of the time it sits in a fireproof
file cabinet in my home, and I insert it when I am ready to do a
backup. I don't schedule my backups because sometimes weeks will go by
when I have created nothing important. And when I am working on a
project that has not yet been backed up I use a 4 GB USB stick and just
copy the folder to it every so often as I complete a major part of the
project. 

For the hard disk backup I use rdiff-backup. I started with Pybackpack,
which is a GUI front end for rdiff-backup. Over time I figured out
enough about how rdiff-backup works to create a little bash script to
run my backup. I just put a launcher in my Gnome Applications menu to
run the script. To do an entire backup to the hard disk involves
retrieving the hard disk from the file cabinet and inserting it (it
auto-mounts), then click on the script launcher. I generally do this at
night and in the morning the backup is done.




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