[ale] Backup's

[Greg Freemyer]

On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 5:10 PM, Craig Button <craigb.rn at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok one area that Windows and even MAC seem to have a heads up over linux
> is easy to use backup software.  I"ve got a desktop system using Hardy
> that I'd like to set for regular backups.  I'd like to be able to back
> up my Evolution data, my documents of course and the biggy for me is my
> Amarok files.
>
> I'm looking for the best backup solution.  Ideally I'd like a solution
> that allows me to restore my data easily when I try new distro's.
>
> Thanks all.

If your talking online backups (local or remote), I like rdiff-backup
(part of opensuse, don't know about other distros).

I think you can throw it in a crontab entry nicely, but I have it as
part of a large nightly backup script I run.

It maintains a full duplicate directory tree of all your data (think
of doing a rsync every night.)

And it maintains a series of binary deltas that allow you to revert to
a previous nights data.  The delta's are compressed.

If the backup is on the same machine, restoring from the previous
nights version is a simple as cp. (Or drag and drop if you prefer a
GUI.)

Getting older versions (or remote copies) is a little harder and
requires using the CLI, but not too bad.  (there may also be a GUI for
rdiff-backup for doing restores, not sure.)

If you want your backup to be on another machine, or across the
Internet, then it will use ssh to encrypt any data it sends (in
transit only, un-encrypted on the far end).  To do the transmission,
it employs rsync like logic to only have to send the delta's.

I use it to backup a couple hundred GB every night across a T-1.
Since only the delta's get sent, it works great and normally finishes
in less than an hour.  If I have a new large file (ISO, etc.) it may
take a long time to finish, but such is life.

And guess what, if you want this great functionality on a MAC or
Windows box, they support it there too.  Even if the remote machine is
Linux!!!!

Greg
-- 
Greg Freemyer
Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist
http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer
First 99 Days Litigation White Paper -
http://www.norcrossgroup.com/forms/whitepapers/99%20Days%20whitepaper.pdf

The Norcross Group
The Intersection of Evidence & Technology
http://www.norcrossgroup.com