Arch Linux

aeroemike

Member

Registered: 2009-10-09

Posts: 21

Backup up a Linux system to Windows

I have a laptop running Arch and a Windows desktop that I use for gaming.  The laptop has all of my important stuff on it, so I would like to backup its hard drive to the Windows machine, but I'm not really sure how to do that.  There seem to be a lot of solutions for backing up a Windows machine to a Linux machine, but not the other way around.  Of course if they were both Linux machines I could use rsync, but I'd rather not have to reboot the Desktop all the time.  Does anyone have an suggestions?

cesura

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From: Tallinn, Estonia

Registered: 2010-01-23

Posts: 1,867

Re: Backup up a Linux system to Windows

Well, you would need some way of either mounting the drive or copying files over a network. Because laptop hard drives are a little troublesome, I suggest SSH. All you have to do is boot off of a live CD on your Windows PC and mount the NTFS partition somewhere. Then, making sure SSH is started on both machines, you can open up a file transfer client such as FileZilla. Simply copy all of the files from your laptop that you want to the location where you mounted your Windows partition. Then, you should wait a while for it to finish (depending on how much you have to copy), unmount the partition, and reboot.

That's how I personally would approach it.

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karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Backup up a Linux system to Windows

Tar it all up and copy/move to the other box?
How often do you need to sync and how much MB / how much new stuff will there be?

aeroemike

Member

Registered: 2009-10-09

Posts: 21

Re: Backup up a Linux system to Windows

I'd like to make incremental backups if possible, probably daily, of the home partition.  It's about 20 GB.  Of course, an automated solution would be ideal.

aeroemike

Member

Registered: 2009-10-09

Posts: 21

Re: Backup up a Linux system to Windows

Well, you would need some way of either mounting the drive or copying files over a network. Because laptop hard drives are a little troublesome, I suggest SSH. All you have to do is boot off of a live CD on your Windows PC and mount the NTFS partition somewhere. Then, making sure SSH is started on both machines, you can open up a file transfer client such as FileZilla. Simply copy all of the files from your laptop that you want to the location where you mounted your Windows partition. Then, you should wait a while for it to finish (depending on how much you have to copy), unmount the partition, and reboot.

That's how I personally would approach it.

That's an option, but I know if I have to reboot every time I want to make a backup, I won't do it as often as I should, and if I do lose the drive (it's getting old) I'll probably lose more data.

Last edited by aeroemike (2010-08-05 18:12:10)

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Backup up a Linux system to Windows

How much will your data change daily? I'm sure you wouldn't like to loose 10 MB of files you've just spend hours to create but it's fairly easy to back them up. If you need a couple GB/day you have less choices.
I simply e-mail my documents to my Gmail account several times a day.

aeroemike

Member

Registered: 2009-10-09

Posts: 21

Re: Backup up a Linux system to Windows

How much will your data change daily? I'm sure you wouldn't like to loose 10 MB of files you've just spend hours to create but it's fairly easy to back them up. If you need a couple GB/day you have less choices.
I simply e-mail my documents to my Gmail account several times a day.

Right, the daily amount changed is small compared to the sum, which is why an incremental method would be preferred.   Also, the important files are not mine alone, so I can't easily know what all has changed.

skunktrader

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2010-02-14

Posts: 1,543

Re: Backup up a Linux system to Windows

rdiff-backup does incremental backups.  The biggest problem with backing up to an NTFS volume is that most permissions/ownership info will be lost.

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Backup up a Linux system to Windows

You can use rsync to copy only the files that had changed since the last backup, tar & compress them (if applicable) and move them to your other computer or to the cloud or both. You obviously need to have the permission to copy the data.
Without some ballpark figures I can't help you much more.

Proofrific

Member

Registered: 2008-01-05

Posts: 215

Re: Backup up a Linux system to Windows

You can use samba to share windows files between Linux and Windows.  Once the computer can share files, you can simply copy the files over to the Windows computer.

aeroemike

Member

Registered: 2009-10-09

Posts: 21

Re: Backup up a Linux system to Windows

You can use rsync to copy only the files that had changed since the last backup, tar & compress them (if applicable) and move them to your other computer or to the cloud or both. You obviously need to have the permission to copy the data.
Without some ballpark figures I can't help you much more.

So should I download something like cwrsync (is there a better package?) to get rsync on the Windows box, and then can I use normal rsync from Arch to backup to the Windows box?  Sorry, I don't have the two boxes here to test.

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Backup up a Linux system to Windows

You rsync your /home/blah and /etc to /home/backup, tar it, compress it and you have a file you can move / copy via samba, sneakernet (a pendrive) or any way you like it.
Windows box has only to let you in - that means it has to be on. With cloud storage, as long as there's network, you can backup your stuff automatically.

rdiff-backup and the like do more or less the same things as I described above.
You really have to know your needs: it makes quite a difference to backup 1 GB every 4 hrs v. 100 KB once a day.

aeroemike

Member

Registered: 2009-10-09

Posts: 21

Re: Backup up a Linux system to Windows

You rsync your /home/blah and /etc to /home/backup, tar it, compress it and you have a file you can move / copy via samba, sneakernet (a pendrive) or any way you like it.
Windows box has only to let you in - that means it has to be on. With cloud storage, as long as there's network, you can backup your stuff automatically.

rdiff-backup and the like do more or less the same things as I described above.
You really have to know your needs: it makes quite a difference to backup 1 GB every 4 hrs v. 100 KB once a day.

That's a good point.  I was thinking rsync (Linux) directly to rysnc (Windows), but I can easily write a script to do a multiple step backup like you described in a cron job.

yejun

Member

Registered: 2009-10-21

Posts: 66

Re: Backup up a Linux system to Windows

tar can do incremental backup. rsync isn't a real backup solution, because if you change a file in working copy, your backup copy will be changed too.

Last edited by yejun (2010-08-05 19:21:09)

aeroemike

Member

Registered: 2009-10-09

Posts: 21

Re: Backup up a Linux system to Windows

tar can do incremental backup. rsync isn't a real backup solution, because if you change a file in working copy, your backup copy will be changed too.

Hmmm.  I had been using script trickery to store my old rsync backups.  I never knew tar could do incremental backups.

aeroemike

Member

Registered: 2009-10-09

Posts: 21

Re: Backup up a Linux system to Windows

tar can do incremental backup. rsync isn't a real backup solution, because if you change a file in working copy, your backup copy will be changed too.

Hmmm.  I had been using script trickery to store my old rsync backups.  I never knew tar could do incremental backups.

Ok, unless I'm doing something wrong, this isn't my idea of incremental backups.  The incremental tar file is the same size as the original tar file.  Is that supposed to happen?  This way I would be saving any space making incremental backups.

aeroemike

Member

Registered: 2009-10-09

Posts: 21

Re: Backup up a Linux system to Windows

tar can do incremental backup. rsync isn't a real backup solution, because if you change a file in working copy, your backup copy will be changed too.

Hmmm.  I had been using script trickery to store my old rsync backups.  I never knew tar could do incremental backups.

Ok, unless I'm doing something wrong, this isn't my idea of incremental backups.  The incremental tar file is the same size as the original tar file.  Is that supposed to happen?  This way I would be saving any space making incremental backups.

Never mind, I found out what I was doing wrong.  The article I read was confusing me.  Thanks for the info.