Backup disk

belrpr · Guru Joined: 22 May 2006 Posts: 440

Hi,

I am looking for a way to completely backup my sata 300Gb disk (Which is 100Gb used) to my ata disk (250Gb) so in case of some problems I could just put everything back. Does anyone know how to do this?

Any help is appreciated.

justwantstohelp · Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2006 9:16 am Post subject:

You could check out the wiki article on backing up: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Backup
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batistuta · Veteran Joined: 29 Jul 2005 Posts: 1384 Location: Aachen

I usually think of the following methods:
- Complete image. There are programs for this (sorry, don't know which ones since I don't use them). These create full mirrors of your data
- Rsync: this method is good for having two machines exactly the same. Some people use this for backup, but I don't like it.
- tar: I use a variant of this called dar, which is like a tar, but with lots of extra options and with splitting of files in mind (like in to DVDs). I use this method because it allows for incremental backups, while a complete image doesn't.

So for once every six months backup, I'd go for image. Is the quickest to restore. For syncing two machines, I'd go for rsync. For everyday backup, I'd use dar in combination with sarab. That's what I actually do:

With dar I create an incremental backup everyday, weekly differential, and monthly full. I do that with encryption and compression using sarab under a cron job, and store the backup into a second HD. Then I ssh/copy the file to a friend's HD in Sweeden, so I have a backup off-site.