What is the best strategy to back up to a USB drive?

iKevin · 2007-02-11 14:15:33

Hi All

I am going to buy a USB drive for backup and have a few questions that might have been worked out by others. These drives come pre-formatted with vfat. My first inclination would be to use rsync to perform the backup but vfat can't hold all of the permissions, ownership, etc. that are required. I think I would end up in trouble with tar as well. Ultimately, the tar file would be too large. Thus, I guess I would have to break it up somehow. Anyways, is there a good strategy for performing such a backup?

Thanks
Kev

Last edited by iKevin (2007-02-11 14:48:06)

Mr Green · 2007-02-11 16:47:09

would it be that much of a problem to reformat drive to ext3 or something more Linux friendly .....?

harlekin · 2007-02-11 17:04:21

I suggest to format it to ext3 or ext2 as well.

If you want to leave vfat on it and want to copy your partition 1 to 1, you may be interested in dd. But I am not sure if something like this really is handy and not too dagerous.

dd if=/dev/hda1 -of=backup

bpisciot · 2007-02-11 18:37:14

You might also look into Unison file synchronizer. It's available in extra. I think it will work with vfat. It puts a graphical layer onto rsync. I've used it to sync files between two machines connected via NFS and with a usb drive. Works great for me.

Bob

sash · 2007-02-11 18:44:16

if you want to keep the vfat I'd suggest making tar.gz archives

smoon · 2007-02-11 19:05:28

sash wrote:

if you want to keep the vfat I'd suggest making tar.gz archives

I agree. Otherwise I'd go for rsnapshot.

iKevin · 2007-02-11 20:40:26

Thanks for all of the great replies. I would like to leave it vfat so that I can also back up my wife's Windows machine. rsnapshot looks very interesting.

Thanks
Kevin

lanrat · 2007-02-12 00:11:20

If you keep vfat on your usb drive you should try the new "flush" option for mounting (just replace "async" or "sync" in /etc/fstab or anywhere else with "flush").

It will write files down right after copying which should improve tolerance for power downs and accidental data loss of cached files. Not mentioning you'll be able to unplug the drive without any actions.

proc · 2007-02-12 21:24:10

bpisciot wrote:

You might also look into Unison file synchronizer. It's available in extra. I think it will work with vfat. It puts a graphical layer onto rsync. I've used it to sync files between two machines connected via NFS and with a usb drive. Works great for me.
Bob

Only to clarify things: Unison doesn't use rsync, but its own algorithms which are more advanced than rsync (can cope with updates to both replicas of your data)
I point this because someone may think it is only a frontend to rsync and miss this good opportunity.

iKevin · 2007-02-12 23:13:26

JUst a quick question so that I understand. Can unison backup unix files to vfat and recover those files with the correct permissions and ownership? I guess that would imply the unison would store extra metadata for files copied to the vfat partition.

Thanks
Kev

lanrat · 2007-02-13 12:55:03

How about manual? :-)

Permissions
Synchronizing the permission bits of files is slightly tricky when two different filesytems are involved (e.g., when synchronizing a Windows client and a Unix server). In detail, here's how it works:
When the permission bits of an existing file or directory are changed, the values of those bits that make sense on both operating systems will be propagated to the other replica. The other bits will not be changed.
When a newly created file is propagated to a remote replica, the permission bits that make sense in both operating systems are also propagated. The values of the other bits are set to default values (they are taken from the current umask, if the receiving host is a Unix system).
For security reasons, the Unix setuid and setgid bits are not propagated.
The Unix owner and group ids are not propagated. (What would this mean, in general?) All files are created with the owner and group of the server process.

EDIT:
I'd suggest reading this and/or this and/or this first to find which backup system is the best for you.
There are many programs which should work in your case you and many "meta" systems that should make it easier to configure (like backupninja for example).

I think you should also reconsider using vfat. It's not the best choice for a backup system. Ext3 would do much better and make it much simplier. You can always reformat the hd back to vfat under linux. For large hds it's actually easier to do that under linux (XP has a 35 GB limit when formatting vfat partitions...).

Last edited by lanrat (2007-02-13 13:50:34)

kozaki · 2007-04-27 12:17:31

lanrat wrote:

(couic)
I think you should also reconsider using vfat. It's not the best choice for a backup system. Ext3 would do much better and make it much simplier. You can always reformat the hd back to vfat under linux. For large hds it's actually easier to do that under linux (XP has a 35 GB limit when formatting vfat partitions...).

Actually you do not need to reformat an ext2/3 partition to use it under Windows, as it is quite easy now to add ext2/3 support to Windows 2k/XP/Vista with Ext2fsd driver for Windows

Arch Linux

#1 2007-02-11 14:15:33

What is the best strategy to back up to a USB drive?

#2 2007-02-11 16:47:09

Re: What is the best strategy to back up to a USB drive?

#3 2007-02-11 17:04:21

Re: What is the best strategy to back up to a USB drive?

#4 2007-02-11 18:37:14

Re: What is the best strategy to back up to a USB drive?

#5 2007-02-11 18:44:16

Re: What is the best strategy to back up to a USB drive?

#6 2007-02-11 19:05:28

Re: What is the best strategy to back up to a USB drive?

#7 2007-02-11 20:40:26

Re: What is the best strategy to back up to a USB drive?

#8 2007-02-12 00:11:20

Re: What is the best strategy to back up to a USB drive?

#9 2007-02-12 21:24:10

Re: What is the best strategy to back up to a USB drive?

#10 2007-02-12 23:13:26

Re: What is the best strategy to back up to a USB drive?

#11 2007-02-13 12:55:03

Re: What is the best strategy to back up to a USB drive?

#12 2007-04-27 12:17:31

Re: What is the best strategy to back up to a USB drive?

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