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I have a desktop that has some valuable personal and financial records, photos, etc. I installed a second drive formatted ext3 called 'internalbackup'. I've been using a variety of backup programs, and none have really been what I wanted. I'd like a copy of the current user's (wife's) home folder backed up in a simple way, so that someone who isn't me (the non-technical wife) could find everything important using just a file browser should that ever become necessary. Disk space is not a problem.

Using 'scheduled tasks' from the repository, I created a cron job:

rsync -a --delete ~/ /internalbackup/daily.backup &> /dev/null 2>&1
rsync -a --delete /internalbackup/daily.backup /internalbackup/weekly.backup &> /dev/null 2>&1
rsync -a --delete /internalbackup/weekly.backup /internalbackup/monthly.backup &> /dev/null 2>&1

The daily runs every morning at 0400. The weekly runs Mondays at 0200. The monthly runs the last day of the month at 0000.

Wasted time is of no consequence because it only really happens in the middle of the night.

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  • Um... This will definitely work, although you should definitely look at an offsite backup (ie: copy it to a drive and give it to a friend or use CrashPlan, etc.); But otherwsie, yeah, this will work. Jun 4, 2013 at 3:59
  • Yeah, my off-site backup plan is a 2TB USB drive I bring home from work about once a month. I rsynch all the home directories on all five household computers over the weekend and take it back. I suppose I need a second so I can swap them, but money doesn't grow on trees . . at least not on my trees.
    – Marc
    Jun 4, 2013 at 4:40
  • if you have 10USD/month, just get crashplan unlimited, and then you can do a complete backup (unlimited gb) on up to 10 computers offsite, and its file by file so you can revert changes by file, plus theyll send you a few drives to do your inital backup. Jun 4, 2013 at 4:57
  • Sounds like it would be most useful to put on my daughter's notebook before she heads off to college and link it to the home desktop since I won't be there as her personal IT department. Thanks.
    – Marc
    Jun 4, 2013 at 5:54
  • Well actually, you can set it up on ten computers, so set it up on all the computers you manage. It 10/month, and you get 10 computers with that, NOT 10/computer/month. :) Jun 4, 2013 at 7:41

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