Thoughts on Backing Up your System

[nickburns]

I tried to start a thread on backing-up, but it fell into the tread graveyard.

I want to know what everyone does to backup their system. What they backup and why. The biggest piece I would like to know is what system do you use and why. (Like rsync or some program, etc....)

Thanks for all your input.

[aysiu]

I use

rsync -av /source /destination

It's simple, and it doesn't take up a lot of time, since it will copy only new or modified files.

[bread eyes]

I use the identity function to backup my data.

[smoker]

i tend to just connect up an external drive and drag over the main stuff in my home partition, not very elegant, but with my way of working, incremental backups aren't really possible, besides, it doesn't take that long.

i don't bother backing up the os, ubuntu is that quick to install now, and i'm forever changing the look, so a reinstall would give me an excuse to try new things, rather than be an inconvenience to me that a backup image would allay!

[rfruth]

Mine is pretty simple so I use TAR

[starcraft.man]

Drive imaging for the majority. I back up the images to an external usb. For data, I make redundant copies of important files across my 2 HDs and USB drive. I'm a simple backup person.

[init1]

I don't backup at all. I should, especially since one of my partitions is dieing.

[SunnyRabbiera]

I use a seagate external HD, seagate externals are ultra awesome with linux

[jdong]

I use an external hard drive, usually cheaply bought via an enclosure and a great HDD online deal. I choose almost exclusively Seagate media -- I will refuse to use any other hard drive brands unless they are SCSI or rated for server use.

As far as backup tools it depends on the job. My home directory is backed up with rdiff-backup, which is essentially a nonfancy version of Apple's Time Machine.

My root filesystems that are XFS are backed up with xfsdump, while non-XFS ones I will usually tarball up every time I make a very significant change.


Every month or so when I get bored, I'll test my backup regime with a test restore onto a spare hard drive and a bootup. I've caught on two occasions backup script/methodology errors that left me with an incomplete restore -- it is really really important to test backups.

[strabes]

I manually copy entire contents of /home to the backup folder on my external hard drive before I go to bed every couple of days. On my dell laptop everything works out of the box (except fglrx) so I have minimal work to do after a fresh install + copying back home dir.