command line to backup my documents to external drive

[Henri Shustak]

> I'm really confused with all the examples out there and all different types of incremental backups. I tried several scripts but cannot reduce the size of my backup folders. What I want is to backup my documents to my external drive every month and save as much disk space as possible.
> 
>  Lets say I have 3 backup directories in the external drive, backup03.10, backup04.10 and backup05.10. I want to:
> 
> 1) keep old files in backup03.10 that have been deleted in May, and hence are not in backup05.10
> 2) use symbolic or hard links for files or directories that have not been modified
> 3) files that were modified in May must be in backup05.10 whereas the old versions in backup03.10 and backup04.10, with those in backup04.10 being symbolic links (if possible)

You may want to have a look at LBackup : <http://www.lbackup.org>

Although hard-linking is part of the way LBackup works to reduce backup size, please be aware that there are other ways to reduce the backup set size which are not implemented in the current version of LBackup.

If you are interested to see if LBackup is a possible solution without installing it onto your system and giving it a try, please consider watching an LBackup screen cast. The screen cast called "Basic Backup Local Machine" is probably the most relevant to you : <http://www.lbackup.org/screencasts>

In addition, I would suggest looking at Mike Rubel's article which relates to snapshot-style backups with rsync : <http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/>

Finally, currently there is a ".pkg" installer for Mac OS X and a ".deb" installer for Debian and derivative systems (with support for dpkg). However, provided you are running a *NIX system you should be able to easily install LBackup from the source code. Instructions, relating to installing LBackup onto almost any *NIX platform that supports rsync is available from : <http://www.lbackup.org/source>


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