Remote File Backup

syntac · n00b Joined: 13 Apr 2003 Posts: 44

I am currently using my gentoo computer as a file server for my network that is running both samba and an ftpd. I recently bought an external hard drive and I would like to copy roughly 40GB worth of files from my gentoo machine on to the external hard drive (NTFS). The external drive will be connected to a Windows XP machine. I'm looking for some methods on how to do this that will insure the data is 1:1. Can I simply 'drag and drop' the files and rest assured that a perfect backup has been made or should I use some software to do all the work for me?

Wade

drescherjm · Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2007 5:20 am Post subject:

try unison its in portage and it will verify that the data is the same on both sides although it is slow...
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John

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Jake · Veteran Joined: 31 Jul 2003 Posts: 1132

How is this question about Gentoo? Am I understanding correctly that the actual copying will be performed from Windows XP?

If you've only ever used the Samba/FTP share from Windows, you have nothing to worry about. If you transfered files from a *NIX machine over FTP or Samba with UNIX extensions or case sensitivity enabled, you risk losing metadata (permissions, timestamps, etc.) or, in the case of filenames differing only by case, data.

syntac · n00b Joined: 13 Apr 2003 Posts: 44

The relevance to Gentoo is that I was considering programs for either Gentoo or Windows. An example might be a program that runs on Gentoo that creates multiple mini image files that I can transfer over to windows and use a program to extract it all without risk of losing data integrity. I don't know if this exists or not, which is why I was asking. I'm just looking for some suggestions on different methods of doing this with the pros/cons weighed out.

drescherjm · Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2007 5:45 am Post subject:

For unison you would run it on gentoo and on windows and the transfer would be from unison to unison. There is one catch. You need the same versions on both systems which is difficult because there are only a few windows binaries available. About 3 years ago I used unison to transfer around 1TB of medical images from several windows servers to our gentoo servers and I did not loose anything..

With that said samba has been very reliable for me so wouldn't expect to loose any data their either.
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John

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morgant · n00b Joined: 16 Jun 2002 Posts: 37

When I need to do this sort of thing, I use rsync since already it already has source/destination comparison. Specifically, I use