Arch Linux

RobertBuhren

Member

Registered: 2011-09-05

Posts: 59

Incremental backup of big files?

Hello,

i'm looking for a way of doing an incremental backup of my whole system. I've always used rsync for such purposes, but now i also want to backup a virtual machine disk which is ~25GB.
I used to think that rsync is capable of just sending the changed blocks to the backup, but no matter what options i use, rsync always copies the whole file even if i just have booted the vm once.
Is there another way of doing an incremental backup of big files?

This is the command i've used so far:

rsync --delete --progress -auHAX --exclude=/proc --exclude=/dev --exclude=/sys --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/run --exclude=/tmp / /mnt/BACKUP/

Thanks in advance,

robert

bernarcher

Forum Fellow

From: Germany

Registered: 2009-02-17

Posts: 2,281

Re: Incremental backup of big files?

The wiki is your friend: Backup Programs.

Please don't forget your homework: Search before posting! This has been discussed several times on the forums.

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karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Incremental backup of big files?

You can try xdelta http://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=xdelta3

Edit: Have you tried compressing that virtual machine image or using a dynamic one?

Last edited by karol (2012-08-18 13:13:27)

djgera

Developer

From: Buenos Aires - Argentina

Registered: 2008-12-24

Posts: 723

Website

Re: Incremental backup of big files?

Use --inplace, but maybe you may want to use it only for big files, see rsync manpage.

PS: You may want to use -x instead of all --exclude.