scripts for portable, incremental backups to external disk (or DVD)

[M. Fioretti]

Les,

thanks for the
On Thu, August 9, 2007 3:12 pm, Les Mikesell wrote:
> M. Fioretti wrote:
>> Greetings,
>>
>> I have started to rethink from scratch my backup procedures
>> and would like your suggestion on how to do what follows.
>>
>> I want to write a script that makes total or incremental backups
>> (depending on a command line switch) of selected directories
>> of my computer on an external USB drive so that the drive
>> content looks like, for example:
>>
>> 20070809_complete            (complete backup of all selected
>>                               files)
>>
>> 20070810_incr                 (hard links to save space to the
>>                                files in the last _complete folder
>>                                plus copies of all files on the
>>                                PC created or changed since previous
>>                                _backup)
>>
>> 20070812_incr                  same structure as 20070810_incr
>>
>> etc...
>
> Personally, I like backuppc running over the network from some other
> machine to do this grunge work automatically, but if you only have one
> machine I'd looke at rdiff-backup.
>
>> (a complete backup would be 8+ GB of stuff)
>
> These days you can get USB drives based on laptop hard drives that go up
> to 250 gigs and don't need external power.
>
>> I know, or can figure out by myself, how to put together the basis of
>> this
>> with rsync. What I would like feedback on is about the best, that is
>> fastest and most reliable, Fedora-compatible ways to:
>>
>> create something that is completely readable with any operating system
>> (including hidden files, links, long file names...): what if I need to
>> recover files from there from a friend's Mac or Windows laptop? This is
>> a filesystem question, so how would I format/ (re) create it?
>
> With backuppc this happens automatically because you can access it
> through a web interface to browse and download files - but you need
> network access to the server.  With portable drives it will be hard to
> both maintain all attributes and be able to read it on anything.
> FAT-formatted USB drives are the only thing that will work across
> linux/windows/mac and like CD/DVD filesystems, it won't maintain all the
> attributes unless you write tar archives that will make it harder to
> access and keep rsync from working.
>>
>> check periodically, as quickly as possible, that everything is still
>> intact, that is that no single files or links etc... have been damaged.
>
> Rsync will do this, if the disk format lets you use it.
>
>>
>> Now a couple of OT question, answers to these are much better sent off
>> list.
>>
>> 1) What about reliability of hard disk versus DVD based backups?
>>    Links to relevant reading are welcome.
>
> Keep several copies, regardless.  Maybe your best solution is to use an
> ext3 USB drive as the main backup, preserving attributes and do separate
> DVDs or VFAT disks for the files you might want to use elsewhere.  Or if
> you have internet access to a remote machine, rsync over ssh works
> nicely, with or without backuppc driving it.
>
>
>> 2) Any positive or negative feedback about Lacie external USB 2.0
>> drives?
>>    (the store at the corner has an offer on the 300968E model...)
>
> The worst thing about portable drives is the power connector for the
> ones that need external power.  If you plan to move it around, I'd
> recommend one of the new laptop-drive based versions that run off USB
> power, or a flash based version if you only need 8 gigs.
>
> --
>    Les Mikesell
>     lesmikesell at gmail.com
>
>


-- 
just testing for now