[Discuss] Possible backup scenarios for a 500GB drive

[David Frey]

I'm a bit late getting in on this discussion, but I have a few comments.

Incremental backups are good because you may not know that you have
accidentally deleted something before your next backup runs.  If you are
cloning then your data is gone.

If you are getting a 500GB drive for your computer, get a 750GB or 1TB
drive for incremental backup unless you think there will be a large
portion of the data on the main disk that you can do without backing up.

Dave

On 10/24/2007, "Alan W. Irwin" <irwin at beluga.phys.uvic.ca> wrote:

>I am just in the middle of purchasing a new system with a 500GB internal
>hard drive, and I have heard that a good way to back up large internal
>drives is with a large external hard drive. Such external hard drives are
>relatively cheap these days (~$150 for a USB 2.0 500GB external hard drive
>at atic.ca). One backup scenario I am thinking of is to periodically plug in
>a USB external hard drive and run rsync to clone everything under / on the
>internal drive to the external one.  Would that allow me to boot from
>the external hard drive as a temporary measure if the internal hard drive
>failed, and it was taking a while to replace it?
>
>Another backup procedure which I know would work would be to use
>dump/restore from a rescue distro such as RIP.  (I used that method in the
>past to restore the club shuttles to a known state after they were loaned
>out to club members for talks.) However, that method would not allow me to
>boot during the time when the internal hard drive was being replaced, and
>I am wondering if the rsync method would actually allow that?
>
>Alan