Re: [opensuse] Suggestions for backup software?

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Stan Goodman wrote:
I would be grateful for advice about backup software appropriate for my
situation, and for remarks people using such utilities, including what to
avoid. I can see that there are several packages available through YaST,
but it would be helpful to know what others think about them and about
relative advantages.

I have only one Linux system here, so network capability is not important.
I do not have a tape drive, but would be read carefully any remarks about
whether I need one. If not, then it would have to be something capable of
bridging DVDs for a total backup, and probably CDs for incremental
backup.


At the moment I use my a bash script to tar to a DVD which I put
together after my tape unit died. While this has rescued me from the
effects of a hardware failure in the past in that I did not loose any
data, the recovery process was not smooth. This did prompt me to review
the options then.

Many on the list use rsync and rsnaphop to backup to an external
hardware device. Based on personal experiences as a system admin I would
regard this as an approach that has a couple of potential flaws. I would
personally be a bit wary of relying completely on a USB based external
hard drive as a sole place to backup data, backup to a network device or
a caddy based device, with at least two independent locations would be
much more preferable.

I have had the experience of hardware failure during a backup and lost
both backup and source data as a consequence. As I was using removable
media I could go back to an earlier backup, but with a single hard drive
life might become the wrong kind of interesting. There are ways to
mitigate the impact of hardware failure (e.g. RAID), but these do not
cope with software related issues.

The option of buying more hard drives to cover this leads one to the
scenario that one has more hard drive capacity to contain backup data
than that actually been used to work with (a situation for a home based
scenario that is faintly ridiculous). In a non-home environment the
multiple location option this is obviously much more viable.

If have looked at KDar/Dar and felt that these did not really work very
well as a Tar/Star alternative. The Ghost/image based approach is good
for system replication where you need to clone machines, but limited as
a backup solution. Bacula and amanda are both good tape orientated
solutions (though the former is slightly eccentric and the latter
industry strength with all that entails). Seagate did use to supply a
Linux version of Tapeware with their tape units but the last time I
checked this the 64 bit version was a liability.

In many situations a solution that allows for recovery of a file that
got deleted in error (or corrupted) for one reason or another way back
when, is as useful as a solution that offers a full data recovery in the
event of a system failure. For home use a data management tool which
provides for both eventualities on removable media does have a place.
With double sided DVDs and the end of the high capacity optical media
wars this approach looks more attractive.

I am working on it :-)

- --
==============================================================================
I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my
telephone.
My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.

Bjarne Stroustrup
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