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How do incremental backup programs work?

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Chris:
One of the best known (in the Linux world) incremental backup program is rysnc http://rsync.samba.org/. It is used extensively to synchronize mirrors of files etc . It is explained at http://rsync.samba.org/how-rsync-works.html.

I use it on a Windows PC to backup to a Linux server. It is a command line program, not a GUI but when setup works very effectively.

Chris

jgpaiva:
Rsynch looks very good!
Thanks a lot for the pointer, Chris. I'll give it a good read ;)

jgpaiva:
Hi!
Sorry for digging up this thread, but I wanted to ask you guys something:

Does your backup system allow you to save multiple backups to hdd, and access them on a snapshot basis? Like.. "how was my system 30 days ago?" Or do you have to check the incremental backup made at the time and if some file isn't there check the previous one and so on? Or does it tell you: "this file is on backup X, please insert CD"?

Thanks!

Armando:
I use a not exactly orthodox incremental backup method with SyncBackSE. All new files or files that have changed are backedup everyday/several times a day, and compressed in a zip file. I keep all these compressed files, and when my external HD gets rather full, I dump them on DVDs and archive the DVDs (date, etc.). But this has to be done only once every couple months maybe, or more. Then, when I'm looking for something, I use 2 different methods to find specific files : WinRAR's searching capabilities inside encrypted multiple compressed files (works pretty quick and well), or Archivarius. I used to use Archivarius (each time I put stuff on a DVD, I indexed all zipped files content in Archivarius --> excellent!) but I stopped doing it when I decided that everything would be encrypted... Of course, if I was using TrueCrypt, it would still be possible... But I haven't managed to devise a new strategy including truecrypt.

f0dder:
Block-level backups... that would have to either be closely integrated with the filesystem (could be done as a filter driver in Windows - see MirrorFolder, their (badly named) "RAID-1 mirroring" option does this (oh, and crosslink to this thread seems appropriate)). If you don't go for this kind of integration, you'd have to compare source/dest files to only backup changes, this could be very costly.

On linux I use rsnapshot, which is pretty nice - it has "last X {hours, days, weeks, months, years}" like the Apple TimeMachine, implemented through use of hardlinks (ie., minimal disk usage - doesn't have changed-blocks though, so a bit change in an 8gig file will still mean a new 8gig file). It's not super suited for backing up my workstation, though, since the backup machine "pulls from the client", instead of the "client pushing to the server".

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