Verifying backups

[Henri Shustak]

Just chiming in slightly off topic.

As a first step if you are going to be backing up files to some media with a computer it would be a really good idea to ensure, that the hardware being used is not faulty. I am not saying that your hardware is faulty. However, it would be worth checking this somehow. Check the drive media for bad blocks, check that all the cables are working well. Ensure the mother board of the system is in good working order etc.

As a second step if you are going to be performing backups (with a file system based tool such as rsync) to any kind of file system in future, I would strongly suggest checking the file system is in a good state on a regular basis. File system corruption is capable of cause all sorts of problems for backup systems which rely upon the file system like rsync.

Hope this helps.

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On 2/10/2015, at 9:48 AM, Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg at tristatelogic.com> wrote:

> 
> In message <560CE706.303 at sanitarium.net>, 
> Kevin Korb <kmk at sanitarium.net> wrote:
> 
>> Yes, when it comes to local copies cp is significantly faster than
>> rsync.  Without --link-dest there isn't much advantage to using rsync
>> for backups.  The only thing you get beyond cp -au is --delete.
> 
> I just now remembered the (forehead slap) bloody obvious reason I decided
> to use rsync to make and maintain my backup drive(s).
> 
> Yes, it theory I could have used something simpler... cp -R or else
> maybe cpio -p... but those just copy everything blindly.  For my
> backups, I only need/want to have the NEW and/or MODIFIED files
> copied to the backup drive.  (And also, of course, I need to have
> files that have been deleted on the main drive be deleted also on
> the backup drive.)
> 
> Rsync does everything I want as far as making and maintaining backups.
> I could also have used FreeBSD backup & restore programs, but for
> reasons I can't really remember anymore, I concluded that rsync was
> the better option.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> rfg
> 
> 
> P.S.  I have no idea what the -u option for cp is supposed to do.
> I guess that must be a Linux-ism.  The FreeBSD man page for cp doesn't
> mention any such thing as a -u option.
> 
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