[clug] Linux + backup +CD-RW

Darren Freeman daz111 at rsphysse.anu.edu.au
Mon Oct 27 09:28:38 EST 2003


On Fri, 2003-10-24 at 21:21, Randall Crook wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am looking for a program that will allow me to backup a number of
> directories both local and remote across a batch of CD-RWs (Don't have a
> DVD writer :-(). I am hoping there is a simple prog that will do this
> for me in a easy manner.
> 
> Any suggestions would be appretiated.

I just use tar ;)

If your backups are complicated then make a script, but I just use tar,
gzip and split (as one pipe) to spit out burnable chunks. As they appear
I burn them (provided the next file is growing, this file is then
finished). Again this is scriptable with mkisofs and cdrecord but I do
everything manually while working. Before deleting any file I always
diff the cd against the file using a different drive to what I burned
with.

Also beware that diffing against a CD/DVDROM who is IDE master while a
burner is chugging as slave will usually ruin the burn due to buffer
underrun. Bare minimum the CD burner should be master, but different
channels altogether would be better.

That's how I do it, it doesn't happen often and I have confidence in its
reliability. Beware that a single error will ruin a gzip so maybe bzip2
is the better option, you can ask it to add redundancy too. But it's a
lot slower on compression (decompression might be quicker, dunno).

Have fun,
Darren




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