>
> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 12:03:32 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Freeman <david_freeman(a)rocketmail.com>
> Reply-To: David_freeman(a)rocketmail.com
> To: alug(a)stu.uea.ac.uk
> Subject: [Alug] Backing up
>
> All,
>
> I am thinking it may be a good time to start thinking about backing up
> the data on my HDD. I am after a cheap method and I though about
> getting a CDRW drive now they are sub 」100. Is this a good idea? can I
> just use tar to put it all on a cdrw each week? What would people
> recommend? Will any CDRW drive work with Linux?
>
> Thanks
>
> D
>
>
This sounds good. It's very roughly what I do. My methods below might
sound OTT but it has saved me in the past. Take what you like from it....
I run a nightly cronjob that backs up all the changes in the last 24hrs
from my home folder (usually about 20mb). I also run a weekly cronjob
that does the same (about 100mb). Those tar files are sent to a
partition entirely separate from anything Linux. To my Macintosh
partition actually. Then, when that 'backup' partition gets full, like
it is doing now, I back up my entire home folder (1gb) and burn the lot
onto a couple of CDs. I do this about once a month. Sure, I have
multiple backups of a lot of stuff, but I like it that way, because if I
make a stupid error somewhere down the line, I can usually just go back
to the backup I made the day before the error and rescue those backed up
files. It works as a kind of archive of backups. When I feel confident
that a set of backups is no use to me any more, I proudly use the CD to
put my coffee on.
This may well sound like unnecessary repetition, but it's all automated,
so I don't do anything except burn a few CDs every month. My CD burner
is firewire, so it won't work in Linux just yet, which is why I use a
back up partition. I could buy some USB storage, but I'm willing to
wait for decent firewire support in Linux. USB is so bloody slow. Like
I said, the above very recently saved me from redoing four months of work....
cheers
joss
p.s. it's a good idea to run the cronjob so it avoids backing up your
browser cache. That keeps the tar size down quite considerably.