Here's an equivalent to Apple's Time Machine for Linux. Customise to your taste. It makes a new top-level directory for each backup, hard-linking the files to the previous one, so you only use space for new/changed files, but can remove any backup without losing any files belonging to another backup. It works quite well on a Git repository too.
At one time I did backups manually by periodically copying directories from my computer to a backup hard drive. The last year or two I've been using the Memeo Instant backup that came with an external Seagate drive. I'm finding out it is not what I thought it was.
First, it doesn't backup the entire drive. It only backs up things that
*it* thinks you want to backup. There is no way to tell it what to backup, or so I thought until I found I could diddle the hidden bit on the user directory to get that to backup. But this means *everything* under user is backed up which is *too* much.
They just offered me a "special" on upgrading for only $40 I think compared to the usual $60. I think this version gets around the issue of controlling what is backed up.
I'm wondering what better backup software is out there for Windows and possibly Linux too. I've got a Raspberry Pi which I may start using as a server and will need to be backed up.
Under Linux I use duplicity. I wrote a small wrapper script around it, and have cron run that script nightly. It was pretty straightforward, but I can't speak to how it works on Windows.
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Rob Gaddi, Highland Technology -- www.highlandtechnology.com
Email address domain is currently out of order. See above to fix.
No idea about Windows. For Linux there's all kinds of programs but in a simple setup like that, it's probably easiest to just use rsync, to another machine or to a USB memory stick that you leave plugged into the Pi. Also since the RPi uses an SD card for storage, if your laptop has an SD slot and you get a USB SD card reader, you can copy the card to another one to have an image copy. Finally if you develop on the RPi, you can set up most source control these days to push your commits to a remote machine.
So many of these types of backup software are only useful for recovering documents inside Users tree and so many I have seen keep backup catalogues on the SOURCE harddrive, let alone allow incremental backups without ensuring the base full backup exists.
So if hard drive buys the ranch they are fairly ineffective for recovery
Firstly what levels of backup do you need? What frequency of backup (or put another way how much data can you afford to lose)?
What amount of time from bare drive to up and running do you want?
In a few places I deal with with Windows servers (due to other software requirements), strategies include
1/ Make DVD of Windows Recovery Environment, this allows Windows backup images, system restore and a few other tools like chkdsk.
2/ If no OS DVD with system take some form of image backup of the 'recovery' (nuke to Factory configuration) partition.
3/ Run suitable Windows Task Scheduler scripts to run Windows backup Either as image, selected or excluded directories/files
On two sites due to they have fairly constant throughput on data that cannot be reproduced easily (including x-rays of some patients daily), they have agreed that a loss of one days data can be mostly recovered from other records as well. There are two servers so items can be sorted to switch over within an hour.
Various scripts run overnight when they are closed
1/ Servers run MIRROR RAID (level 1) as minimum
2/ File ROBOCOPY of two specialist databases (About 30GB) to backup partition, servers and external hard drive
3/ Image of whole boot and main partition to backup partition. Using Windows Backup.
Later copied to backup server and external hard drive.
4/ Robocopy of special software partition containing sources of printer drivers, software, scripts, system documentation
5/ Scripts monitor errors and emails a log file with PASS or FAIL and ejects USB hard drive on final completion.
PASS goes to users to swap external drive daily
FAIL goes to users and me so I know when someone forgot to change drives, or major error occured.
Swapped out drive taken OFF-site (they have 7 drives on each site)
In 3 years a few hard drives failures, however we were able to be recovered from and resynced without loss.
You probably don't need anything so severe but I would recommend the 3 steps I mentioned earlier with new image after new software install or windows updates. Going from old image and waiting for all updates can take a LONG time.
I personally don't like incremental backups, if you have too much data then you should be looking st rsync utilities to other physical machine(s).
A lot of incremental backups get screwed because the original full backup is 1 year or older and not all increment steps are usable or known where to exist. Most incremental recovery goes funny when you even the slightest problem with one of the increment steps. Hence daily images of which the databases are the largest part.
Robocopy allows only changes on files that are newer, and has multiple threading support with ability to MIRROR trees between two drives, so no extra files exist. Robocopy can copy all the file metadata as well (security etc).
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Paul Carpenter | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
PC Services
Raspberry Pi Add-ons
Timing Diagram Font
For those web sites you hate
I wrote my own in Tcl. It compares the file size and the file mod time to make a copy/no copy decision.
I've extended it to create a directory named by date stamp ( could also be time stamp) to store the version on the backup media that is being covered up.
Recovery shouldn't be a problem as the backup is just the same directory structure and files. I can go into it with Windows Explorer and copy any file I wish.
This backup is just of files, not the hard drive as an entity. It runs anytime the backup drive is plugged in keeping it constantly up to date.
For linux, look at unison and unison-gtk. It is customisable, shows you what it will do when you say "go", and makes pessimistic/safe assumptions about things going wrong.
Rick- I use duplicity via cron job as well. You might be interested to know * it can encrypt backups, so you can securely backup to the 'cloud'; and * there are now scripts that hide (simplify) some of duplicity's complexity {I haven't used these - started using duplicity before these were available, no reason not to continue...}
I keep stuff in a relatively watertight directory structure, and once a week I make backup DVDs of the stuff I wouldn't want to lose. (Takes three to five DVDs, depending on what I've touched that week. About a buck's worth, plus half an hour.
That makes me relatively secure from ransomware and so forth, especially since all the important stuff is under version control.
Unfortunately, hard drives and anything USB are increasingly insecure.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
I've just forked out for Acronis Backup 11.5 (Windows). It seems quite good, Claims it can recover the whole PC to a different machine (even to a virtual machine) which I haven't tested yet. It does incremental and differential backups with lost of options re scheduling and what to keep etc. It seems pretty good so far but I've only had it running for week. I chose it as the product with a long track record, reasonable reviews and OK prices (its not cheap). The freeware things I tried were all pretty horrible. (bugs, bad documentation etc).
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