Methodology of backups

[TheBigAmbulance]

I have a 14 Gb directory just full of images/pictures of my family. I have them backed up on an external hard drive, and have burnt bluray discs about 6 months ago. So now there is an update with fresh pictures. So the external hard drive is easy. One .sh file using rsync and everything is good.

But what I am trying to figure out now is to change my whole burning philosophy. Because of the size, I am having to use methods "acetoniso/folder", tar, etc to make them sizeable on a per-media basis. So what I am trying to avoid is buirning another full set, hence why I need to come up with a new solution. What I would like to do is burn a base set 'today'. Then in 6 months, burn an incremental disk based on the difference between the base set, and today's set.

Anyone have an idea on how to do this?

[SteveRiley]

Unless you're keeping the Blu-ray discs offsite, they aren't doing you much good. If your house burns down, you'll lose both the external drive and the discs.

You might consider eliminating the discs from your strategy and taking advantage of something online. CrashPlan has an unlimited plan that's $3.00 per month. I know a number of folks who use this plan just for backing up photos.

[TheBigAmbulance]

Unless you're keeping the Blu-ray discs offsite, they aren't doing you much good.

Yup, keeping the disks in a drawer at work along with an external hard drive. So it is something off site. Appreciate the thought.

What does CrashPlan use for transfer? FTP?

[SteveRiley]

Yup, keeping the disks in a drawer at work along with an external hard drive. So it is something off site. Appreciate the thought.

That'll work. High-speed networking and movements of large volumes of data is something I'm working on a lot lately, so when I saw your original post, the need for geographic diversity sprang to mind.

What does CrashPlan use for transfer? FTP?

HTTPS.

[TheBigAmbulance]

Thanks for that info SteveRiley. I think I am going to get an account. I'm also still looking for another method to burn discs as well. So I'm still back to my original question...

[GreyGeek]

I have 25GB of UbuntuOne storage synced to my Acer.

It's already saved my hide on a couple of occasions, but becareful when you delete a synced file! It will disappear from all the devices synced to your account.

[SteveRiley]

Since we're talking about backup strategies, it seems appropriate to mention that, after a couple days of futzing around, I have successfully created my own clone of Dropbox/SugarSync/etc. I will write up a how-to later.

[james147]

Since we're talking about backup strategies, it seems appropriate to mention that, after a couple days of futzing around, I have successfully created my own clone of Dropbox/SugarSync/etc. I will write up a how-to later.

Using owncloud?

[GreyGeek]

Unless you're keeping the Blu-ray discs offsite, they aren't doing you much good. If your house burns down, you'll lose both the external drive and the discs.

...

I used to keep copies of my systems in my bank deposit box, but later purchased a fireproof safe, which now contains them.

[SteveRiley]

Using owncloud?

Sadly, no. OwnCloud relies on WebDAV for file syncing. WebDAV has no mechanism for file change notifications; thus, the sync client polls the server every 10 seconds or so. I was noticing about 200 KiB traffic exhange during each poll. This is not a good design. For people who run their OC server on something like Amazon Web Services, the bandwidth charges will add up.

My solution uses Unison for syncing, a Python script that detects changes via the kernel's inotify function, and KDialog to raise a notification window whenever a sync happens. I'm still adding the final touches to it.