[NBLUG/talk] Backups?

Chris White Chris.White at corel.com
Fri Jul 25 08:46:02 PDT 2003


Hi!

I back up my server every day.  Full backup on Sunday, incrementals the rest of the week.  I use GNU tar (which has all this capability built-in) and a zsh script I wrote.

What do I backup to?  I have gigabytes of data to backup, so a CD-R won't do (besides, I'd have to be there to feed the beast, and I want my backup to be automatic and unattended).  I backup to a removable hard drive.  In this case a Kanguru drive from Interactive Media Corp.  Currently a 60 Gig disk is available from PC Connection for $170.  That's loads less than a tape drive.  The wonderful thing about this type of removable drive is that Linux just treats it like a regular hard drive.  No drivers or setup needed.  But you can use any removable drive, like a Firewire drive.  I don't want a drive mounted internally, because I want to be able to take the backup drive out and store it offsite if I'm gone for any appreciable time, like on vacation.  Then, if the house burns down, my data doesn't.

I can only keep a weeks' worth of backups on the removable drive -- but that's OK.  I'm not using it as an archive system, but a disaster recovery system.

Regards,

--Chris


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeremy Turner [mailto:jeremy at linuxwebguy.com]
> Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2003 3:04 PM
> To: talk at nblug.org
> Subject: [NBLUG/talk] Backups?
> 
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> Last week I lost my hard drive to a tragic case of a bad 
> power source, and
> realized that the last time I had really backed anything up 
> was 3 months
> ago.
> 
> Now that I have a semi-working system back up again, I'm 
> trying to write a
> script to do my backing up, including files, system info 
> (/proc stuff),
> and other daemon info (mysql, ldap, etc).
> 
> My backup media will be CD-R for permanent storage, and CD-RW for
> temporary storage.  In other words, I'd start out with a 
> CD-RW and a full
> backup, then do daily (or weekly) incremental backups, 
> copying the CD-RW
> contents, then burning the old CD-RW and new incremental 
> backup back to
> the CD-RW.  When the CD-RW fills up, I'd burn it to a CD-R.  Lather,
> rinse, repeat.
> 
> At this rate, I'd use up a CD-R for each full backup 
> (depending on size)
> and one or two CD-RW total.
> 
> I think I am making the assumption that each of my full 
> backups will be
> less than 650/700 MB, which could result in backing up music 
> or program
> downloads using some other process.
> 
> My question to the list is do you backup your home machines?  
> If not, what
> would you do if you lose it (no, seriously)?  Do you backup to some
> machine somewhere else?  Do you rely on other Kazaa users to 
> backup your
> machine (just kidding)?
> 
> Jeremy
> 
> -- 
> Jeremy Turner - jeremy at linuxwebguy.com
> The LinuxWebGuy
> 
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