Destroying "only" your home directory (was Re: Newbie question on permissions)

[Chanchao]

Hello Michael,

Monday, April 3, 2006, 12:14:08 PM, you wrote:

>> Well.. How about open your home folder in Nautilus, go up one folder
>> into home, right-click on your home folder and go 'Archive', then create
>> the archive file on an external USB drive?

MTR> Where does that leave file versioning?  Incremental (or differential)
MTR> backups?  Selective backups?

Nowhere.  Storage is cheap. :)  Tape is dead, and regular users don't
have it anyway. Just copy the lot over once a day, once a week,
whatever.  Then keep a monthly copy for a couple of months.  It's not
that hard?  It's not the ultimate backup solution, but it's good enough for
most people I think?

Those people who find this doesn't meet their needs can go hunt for a
proper backup application, or learn to like the command line. :)

MTR> (I have stuff in my home folder that I
MTR> wouldn't mind too terribly much losing that sucks up a lot of space.)

Ok, keep that in a separate folder and drag only the folders into the
archive that you do want.

MTR> System configurations (for those "power users" that might want to handle
MTR> that situation as well)?

Definitely included in the backup. Not sure if file roller includes
hidden files by default, so that's worth checking.  Otherwise all your
mail, contacts and settings wouldn't be backed up.

MTR> A good backup application handles all of that in a format that's easy to
MTR> access.

Sure.  Just pointing out that making backup is not THAT hard to do
even without a backup application.

Cheers,
Chanchao