Backup questions

Question

Is there anything like Karen's Replicator for Linux? I am told that most of Linux backup software puts everything into a blob ;-) I want a copy of my data onto to my second drive (which is mounted and waiting) copied over daily. No compression needed, both 1Tb, as I often need to get to the previous version quickly.

Also should I be thinking about saving any of the system directories/folders to make it easier to recover if first disk fails?

From what I have read here Cron jobs are the way to go... not got much of a clue what they are yet... step at a time.

Since my first disk failure in the 1980s every PC I owned has had 2 drives with a rigorous daily back-up using xcopy in dos days and similar in cp/m. Not lost any data since... until I got a NAS with raid 5. The controller had a problem and data was not recoverable. Next time I can afford it I will get two NAS with mirroring.

Answer 1

The standard backup utility is Duply, a GUI frontend to Duplicity. This is probably the easiest way to set up a functional backup in Ubuntu. Just type "Backup" into the dash.

Duplicity archives are compressed, but quick to recover individual files, as they contain a manifest. It also manages incremental backups, expiry, and storage capacity.

If you just want a mirror of your files, rsync is available ; Duplicity internally uses rsync for it's incremental abilities, but if you want to go to the extra trouble, rsync can be used on it's own.