[ale] Quiet spinning drives?

[Alex Carver]

On 2017-02-15 01:27, DJ-Pfulio wrote:
> On 02/14/2017 05:53 PM, Alex Carver wrote:
>> Now if only there was a way to image the whole machine while it was
>> still running. :)
> 
> There is.  LVM snapshots + fsarchive

That's assuming the machine was running LVM.  This thing is old enough
that LVM wasn't an option when it was first assembled (although the
kernel is current). :)


> But imaging is so, so, so, Windows. It is extremely wasteful and I only
> use it for the day I migrate from 1 old disk to a new disk.  Most of the
> time, I use rdiff-backup and only backup enough to recreate the machine
> to the same point. That saves 4-8G of OS crap that an ISO has already.
> Restores take 30-45 min this way and always begin with a fresh install
> of the OS from media.

Migrating from one disk to another is exactly the reason here.  The new
drive will replace the old.  I don't want an image for a backup, I want
an image to migrate the drive.  But I also didn't really want to shut
down the system just in the off chance the drives didn't want to come
back up to be copied.  I don't have a choice in the matter, it was
wishful thinking.

> 
> Also, if your rsync backups are NOT versioned, you're missing out on
> some very important protection. There's something about having 60-120
> days of versioned backups that helps me sleep.  Sure, large media files
> don't get that versioning, but everything else does.  Have about 20
> systems backed up to a 1.5TB disk. They wouldn't fit if I used images
> and the time needed to perform the backups would be much, much too long.

Above.  Imaging for the purpose of migrating the disk, not a backup
method.  However I don't need versioning, though.  This is my personal
server, nothing changes unless I make the change myself in which case
I've already duplicated whatever I'm changing.