29 September 2010
Backup to disk using hardlinks:
- BackupPC: Install with sudo aptitude install backuppc.
- Dirvish: Install with sudo aptitude install dirvish.
- rlbackup (Remote Linked Backup): It isn't in Ubuntu's repositories.
The rdiff-backup doesn't use hardlinks for the incremental backups. It stores only one copy for current files and diff files for modified ones. Final backup takes less space (only changed parts of each file are stored and then compressed with gz), but only the last backup can be restored using standard utilities like cp.
The most current backup is a mirror of the original, but older ones must be restored by means of the own rdiff-backup script to un-apply diffs. So i think this program is more useful for directories in which most files are text files (source repositories, etc). It is very unlikely that any space can be saved by making diffs of binary files and it is more inconvenient for restoring older snapshots.
sudo aptitude install rdiff-backup
Related tags: backup, linux