[lug] Re: How Home Backups Should Be Done(tm)

[Alan Robertson]

LittleViggy at alum.manhattan.edu wrote:
> 
> I agree with what you are saying about backups (making it easy,
> otherwise you won't do it).  However, I'm not so sure that a huge
> tape machine is really all that necessary.  I run Win98 as my
> primary OS at home (for the wife and child).  I do backups about
> once a week, and until recently, all fit on one Zip disk!  The average
> home user probably doesn't really have all that much data that
> needs to be backed up.  I don't back up any program files, because
> I have to re-install them anyhow (good ol' Winblows).
> 
> As for system settings, the Windows registry also gets backed up
> (part of the backup program).  I can't see Linux having that much
> data to back up, again for the average home user.

That's certainly a possibility.  I didn't intend to say you had to back up every
last bit, just that it all had to fit on one tape or device for fulls and
incrementals for a week.

One of the big problems with Windows is that it hides user data down in files in
Program Files, so things like your mail store, and your bookmarks, etc. won't
get backed up without significant effort.

Ditto for your pilot data, etc.

You can hack the registry to fix these, but you'll probably miss something
important.  When you add/delete/reinstall programs, you'll have to do it
again... :-(

This is much easier to manage on Linux where you don't have permissions to stash
things in funky places.

	-- Alan Robertson
	   alanr at suse.com


	-- Alan Robertson
	   alanr at suse.com