On 06/15/2010 12:49 PM, Lisi wrote:
On Tuesday 15 June 2010 18:06:51 Camaleón wrote:On Tue, 15 Jun 2010 15:48:04 +0100, Lisi wrote:On Tuesday 15 June 2010 14:40:44 Camaleón wrote:I would differentiate between "backup" data and "archived" data.(...)Thanks for this. I was originally responding to Andrew's saying: <quote> There are many many ways to make take backups beyond having a disk big enough to hold the data. </quote> I can think of very few - and was interested in what he was thinking of. Incremental/differential backups are not really practical, since she will be at school.Why not practical? Just curious O:-)Because I shan't have hold of the computer for long enough or often enough!
*Teach* her. She's in Uni, correct? Thus, she should be responsible enough to take care of her own data by sticking in a USB drive and running a script.
A periodic dd (or Clonezilla?) of the whole drive and more frequent updates of her personal data (of which I understand that there is not much) would be the optimum, but a trifle pricey, so I am still looking at alternative possibilities.The main drawback I see for "dd" or "clonezilla" is that they are very "slowness". It takes much time (and space!) to make a full copy (or image) of the disk and so not very practical because at last the user stops doing the backup on a regular basis :-(The user isn't going to do the backup on a (frequent) regular basis anyway. What I am hoping is to be able to dd (or Clonezilla or something) the drive periodically and take a snapshot of the state of the machine at that point. That will catch all the slow moving/changing files and facilitate a simple restoration if needed. With luck, her personal stuff will fit on a CD or two. Or, since we are anyway assuming that I shall be able to find the money, I may get her a DVD RW. That she might do reasonably often. Another possibility that I haven't yet explored is to get a NAS or something and back all of our machines up to it.
NFS and a multi-drive external USB/Firewire enclosure is all that's needed.
-- Seek truth from facts.