[lug] Automated USB Drive Backup

[Lee Woodworth]

karl horlen wrote:

.....

> I also know that an rsync backup won't allow for
> recovery of deleted files.  Or at least in most cases
> and depending on how I fire off the command.  That's a
> limitation I'm willing to live with.

I use a system somewhat like you are describing: 1 offsite
usb disk, one local usb for backup. Each with a full copy
of selected file systems.

You may find this kind of command useful:

rsync -v --archive --stats --delete --backup
 --backup-dir=/backup/history/fileserv/20071026/photo1
 /photo1/ /backup/fileserv/photo1/

By keeping per-day backup trees you get poor-mans versioning
of file changes (only one version per day). For our systems
we see from 12M to 2,000M deltas (big ones when a photo card
is uploaded).

My little backup system generates the rsync commands
as well as creating the history dirs for each date; and
removing history days over 30 days old. Runs once a night
at approx 3:00AM with no manual intervention. Don't have
to fiddle with mount/unmount events as the usb-connected
backup disk is always plugged in. I do the offsite/
connected drive swap during the day and don't worry
about auto-handling drive mount/unmount.