--link-dest but only if rsync detects differences

[Daniel Jarboe]

>
> But with link-dest you are not creating a new backup; you are only creating
> new LINKS to the same backup.
>
> If the new backup has no changes from the last backup, it takes up no
> space, so why does it matter?  You simply expire your old backup off
> automatically with a rotate script.
>
> Here's what my backup folder looks like:
>
>  2 drwxr-xr-x  23 root  wheel       1024 Nov 14 00:54 serv1.daily.0
>  2 drwxr-xr-x  23 root  wheel       1024 Nov 13 01:05 serv1.daily.1
>  2 drwxr-xr-x  23 root  wheel       1024 Nov 12 00:57 serv1.daily.2
>
...
<snip weekly, monthly, rotation schedule, etc>

I keep mine dated for an easier way for family to see/remember when they
actually made changes.  The filesystem sees updates on average maybe two
days a week, and if recent changes were made only on Nov 9th and Nov 14th,
it works well here to see only a Snapshot-2008-11-09 and Snapshot-2008-11-14
compared to clicking through a few dailies worth of clutter.  That's the
main reason I clean up duplicates (I know in byte-terms I'm just saving
directory blocks and the hard-links are free).

Thanks,
~ Daniel
-------------- next part --------------
HTML attachment scrubbed and removed