Arch Linux

whoops

Member

Registered: 2009-03-19

Posts: 891

Incremential Backup & renaming/moving files

Hi!

I guess usually, when an incremental backup is done, a moved or renamed file will be treated exactly as two different files - one that has been deleted somewhere, and a new one somewhere else, resulting in an "additional copy" of the file and the loss of the traffic & disk-space?

If so: Is there a solution, that actually just links the moved files trough different backup stages instead instead of initiating another "transfer/copy" and keeping different copies of the same file? Or something like that?

Or in general: Which backup solution might be a good one to get into, if moving/renaming big files is common? What man-pages will I most likely want to read and what words to google to be able to make the right "decision"?

Thanks!

rine

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2008-03-04

Posts: 217

Re: Incremential Backup & renaming/moving files

I know of none and I don't think it's that easily possible. If you just compare filenames, you could get problems with files with the same name and you still couldn't rename files. If you really compare the files, you would need to compare every file with every other file. That will probably take way too long.

whoops

Member

Registered: 2009-03-19

Posts: 891

Re: Incremential Backup & renaming/moving files

Mmmh... something like...

1) make list of "deleted on source" and "new on source" files just like I guess rsync etc. do too at some point
1a) optionally drop files with filesize smaller than X from list
2) look if a distinct "new" (source) file has same file-size as a "deleted" (old backup) one / match up
3) compare md5 for files that match (again source <=> old backup)
4) link finds from old backup to new increment backup instead of copying from source

Am I missing something? Maybe I just can't wrap my brain around that one to see the real problem...

Runiq

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2008-10-29

Posts: 1,053

Re: Incremential Backup & renaming/moving files

link-backup (AUR page).

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