How to schedule backups more frequently

Question

Is there any way to schedule backups more than once a day? Like, once an hour? -edit: using the compression method/program used by the automated backups in System Setting - Backups

Answer 1

Every Hour? Little paranoid much? :P But yes.

This provides a good resource if you want to backup files to external locations via the network or to external drives. If you meant backups of the entire disk I think hourly is probably a little much but you could probably do something similar with cron.

To improve the answer for posterity in case the link goes down:

"Cron can be used on Linux to automate the execution of commands, such as rsync. Using Cron, we can have our Linux system run nightly backups, or however often you would like them to run.

To edit the cron table file for the user you are logged in as, run:

$ crontab -e

You will need to be familiar with vi in order to edit this file. Type “I” for insert, and then begin editing the cron table file.

Cron uses the following syntax: minute of the hour, hour of the day, day of the month, month of the year, day of the week, command.

It can be a little confusing at first, so let me give you an example. The following command will run the rsync command every night at 10 PM:

0 22 * * * rsync -av --delete /Directory1/ /Directory2/

The first “0” specifies the minute of the hour, and “22” specifies 10 PM. Since we want this command to run daily, we will leave the rest of the fields with asterisks and then paste the rsync command.

After you are done configuring Cron, press escape, and then type “:wq” (without the quotes) and press enter. This will save your changes in vi. "