Re: [PLUG] Disk-to-disk backup

["Kam Salisbury" <kam@kamsalisbury.com>]

>
>> Uh... Why not use tar?
>
> Several reasons.  One is that I use the backup for several purposes.
> One is to have a recovery path in case of a catastrophe.  Tar would
> work OK for that.  But by far the more common use is for me to restore
> single files that I've accidentally deleted (for which tar is slow)
> and to compare the curent version of a file with the backup version
> (ditto).  Finally, the tar format is very fragile; if a single byte
> gets corrupted in the wrong place, the entire file can become
> unreadable.  Compressing the tar files would make the files even more
> fragile; a single bit corruption anywhere in the file would render the
> entire file useless.
>

Ok. I can see your point but not the validity since any copy operation can
be corrupted by a number of things. Try searching freshmeat.net for other
backup solutions or check out http://www.linux-backup.net/ is the only
other advice I have left to give.

Good luck in your search for a good solution. Personally, I use a really
simplisting rsync script for remote hosts (pipe the rsync over ssh of
course) when I just need data and I pipe dump over ssh from remote hosts
when I need an entire filesystem. locally, I use a firewire connected
harddisk and tar, even for the samba clients on my home network. All tars
eventually end up on CDRW and I take them to work as my offsite storage.
Sme tars never change such as my mp3s so those must be ancient by now,
others change every week and therefore end up being refreshed every so
often. It is not a perfect solution but it does work very well.

I do agree that finding a file can be a bit of a pain though. More than
once I have had to list an entire 650MB tar only to find out that the file
was not on there and must be on one of the other archives of an earlier
date. I wuld love to go with something else... but everything I have seen
so far relies on catelogue files that must be backed up as well or rebuilt
after a bare metal recovery. For my home network -- I am the only one who
cares so why bother. If this was an enterprise level business I would go
with Bru or maybe Storix for sure.

By the way, the http://www.linux-backup.net/ site is actually a rather
good staring point for everything backusp on Linux. From understanding
what a backup actually is to what free scripts there are to do a backup
with to even links for paid software solutions.

-- 
Kam Salisbury
http://kamsalisbury.com
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