Keep backing up (copying) the same file to a new folder

Question

I am saving a stream in my HDD. I'd like to copy the file periodically into a subfolder backup such that the older versions of the the file are not deleted.

Simply put

1. Assume the original file is somefolder/data.
2. The first backup should be somefolder/backup/data.1
3. The second backup should be somefolder/backup/data.2
4. This process should continue in an interval of t minutes/seconds

How do I go about doing this?

Answer 1

oneline bash command finally did the trick

while : ; do cp -vt ./backup/ --backup=numbered -- data; sleep 5; done

The only qualm for this seems to be it saves the backups as data.~n~

Answer 2

Basic, adapt as necessary:

#!/bin/bash
while true; do
  x=5
  while ((x>1)); do
      echo mv somefolder/backup/data.$((x-1)) somefolder/backup/data.$x
      x=$((x-1))
  done
  cp somefolder/data somefolder/backup/data.1
  sleep 60
done