Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Looking for USB pen-drive -> CD based backup system

[Kevin Spicer]

On Sun, 2003-09-14 at 20:10, Steinar Bang wrote:
> I'm looking for a backup system that can satisfy the following usage
> pattern: 
> 
>  Let me take a full backup on a a 512MB flash pen drive, and let me
>  add deltas until it's full.  When the pen drive's full, I would like
>  to make an ISO file and burn a CD, clear the flash drive, and start
>  with a new full backup, followed by new deltas.
> 
>  I would like the resulting CDs to be self contained.  Ie. I would
>  like to easily access any file on any day, without having to look at
>  additional CDs.
> 
> Can rdiff-backup fit this bill?

rdiff-backup makes reverse deltas, so the 'full' backup is always the
most recent (rather than traditional backup solutions where the full
backup is the oldest set of files).  The deltas enable you to restore
older backups by applying the daily deltas to age the restore one day
until you reach the your target date.

I imagine this could be very good for what you want as rdiff-backups
deltas are very compact.  For example I backup a data partition with
rdiff-backup and allowed only an extra 10% of space for increments on
the backup side, this easily accomodates a whole month of deltas (your
mileage will vary depending on how active your filesystem is and how
much files change).  There are a couple of gotchas....

Remember the full backup is the _most_recent_ state of the filesystem,
so take care not to run out of space.

USB data pens tend to use a FAT filesystem, so you may lose metadata
(although you may well be able to reformat using a different filesystem
type).  Just one to be aware of.





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