How best to make daily routine backups from netbook to 2 external HD's?

[Mark Greenwood]

On 5 Feb 2012, at 22:20, Bas Roufs wrote:

> Dear Mark and Everybody Else
> ark and Everybody Else
> 
> As the developer of TARDIS ( :) ) I can say yes it probably is. I refrained from recommending it to you since it won't quite do what you want because it won't back up to 2 different discs - it wasn't ever intended to do that.
> As the developer of TARDIS ( :) ) I can say yes it probably is. I refrained from recommending it to you since it won't quite do what you want because it won't back up to 2 different discs - it wasn't ever intended to do that.
> 
>  This is exactly the reason I hesitate about TARDIS.
> On the other hand: backing up and syncing I do with one external HD at a time only anyway.
> 
> The basic idea of it though is probably what you need; you could use rsync and a couple of bash scripts to do manual incremental backups in the style of TARDIS, but without the automatic ageing. I'd be happy to advise if you like.
> 
> In the meantime, I have been experimenting with "LuckyBackup" - which has RSync and some other scripts under the hood. It works both graphically and with command line. It is in the repo as well. More info:
> http://luckybackup.sourceforge.net/ 
> 
> My experiences so far can be summarised as follows.
> http://luckybackup.sourceforge.net/
> I successfully managed to make a complete backup of the WHOLE home directory to the biggest external HD: "WD Elements" , 2 Terabytes. The strange aspect of this experience is the way in which that HD has been formatted: NTFS. But there was not one single error report. 
> My question is: what best to do with the big external HD? Leaving it as it is now while continuing to use it? Or is it better to reformat it into EXT4 and making a new backup afterwords?
> 
> With respect to the other external HD: that one is a "ADATA NH 92" of 500 GB. Although I did format that one as FAT32, more than 800 error reports have been mentioned with respect to my attempt to backup my HOME directory there. The error reports mainly refer to the KMAIL e-mail directories in .kde/share. An attempt to synchronise the HOME directory at the netbook and the NH92 ended up in a similar result. 
> On the other hand, I DID manage to successfully backup all the datafiles, images, etc. to the NH92. Even eg. software and iso images could be transferred without problems. The problem is limited to the e-mail directory .kde/share. 
> 
> My question is: do I need to reformat the NH92? if I need EXT4 for the backup, is it possible to leave 50 or 100 GB as FAT32 by means of partitioning? 
> 
> Thanks for your replies. Respectfully yours,
> Bas Roufs.


The problem you may have with using these disc formats is if your backup program using hard linking.

The basic method *most* rsync-based backup utilities use is to copy changed files but hard-link to unchanged files. NTFS supports hard linking but in a significantly less efficient way than any ext filesystem. FAT32 does not support hard linking at all.

I've done a minor amount of testing with NTFS on TARDIS but came to the conclusion that although it works ext4 is faster, more reliable, and uses much less disc space. Also note that FAT32 can't handle a file bigger than 2GB - whereas NTFS and ext can.

The other issue you may have with using a non-linux filesystem is to do with file permissions - NTFS handles permissions in a very different way than ext4 so these may not be restored properly. If it were me and I felt I might need to share my data with a Windows system the I'd use NTFS otherwise I'd have no hesitation in reformatting to ext4.

I've no experience with lucky backup so I can't comment on that. If you want to reformat your discs I can think of no reason why you can't make some partitions in the way you suggest.

Mark


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> Nice to see someone recommending it though :)
> 
> Mark
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> 
>> Respectfully yours,
>> Bas.
>> 
>> 
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