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Ask Slashdot: Temporary Backup Pouch?

Posted by timothy on from the don't-forget-your-spare-co-backup-pouch dept.

An anonymous reader writes "It looks simple. I've got a laptop and a USB HDD for backups. With rsync, I only move changes to the USB HDD for subsequent backups. I'd like to move these changes to a more portable USB stick when I'm away, then sync again to the USB HDD when I get home. I figured with the normality of the pieces and the situation, there'd be an app for that, but no luck yet. I'm guessing one could make a hardlink parallel-backup on the laptop at the same time as the USB HDD backup. Then use find to detect changes between it and the actual filesystem when it's time to backup to the USB stick. But there would need to be a way to preserve paths, and a way communicate deletions. So how about it? I'm joe-user with Ubuntu. I even use grsync for rsync. After several evenings of trying to figure this out, all I've got is a much better understanding of what hardlinks are and are not. What do the smart kids do? Three common pieces of hardware, and a simple-looking task."

2 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. not rsync by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    there are better solutions than rsync.
    rdiff-backup
    dupicity
    for example.

    i probably don't understand what you are trying to accomplish.

  2. dump(8) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    this is what dump(8) does