[CoLoCo] Best backup solution

[David L. Willson]

On Sat, 8 Mar 2008 10:50:00 -0700, Jim Hutchinson wrote
> My failure to get software RAID to work is leaving me wondering how best to
> go about backing up. I do occasionally copy my entire /home to a different
> drive but it's not a daily thing and not a perfect solution. I thought RAID
> 1 would have been a good solution - there is always two copies and, in
> theory, you just drop in a new drive if one fails and away you go.
> Unfortunately, RAID is too difficult to use - at least for me. I might
> consider buying a RAID controller but $200 is a lot and it's also one more
> piece of hardware to fail.
> 
> So, how does one do good backups in Linux? I don't want some cryptic cron
> job. I want a straightforward tool that copies and archives data and allows
> for easy recovery of either one file or the whole thing. The simple backup
> tool in the repos looked like a good option but there is no easy way to
> recover all files that I can see, but one file at a time seems easy. In any
> case I want something simple and automatic. I wish there was a time machine
> for Linux but less crappy than the mac one.

Is putting a line in your crontab really too much?  What if one of your friends gave you
the script, and the line to put in crontab?  Better yet, what if that friend gave you a
script that put it in crontab for you?  There really isn't any other way for it to
happen every day without your intervention, is there?

Also, you never did send in those two files, so I'm still unsure your RAID system is
unrecoverable.

David L. Willson
Trainer/Engineer/Consultant
MCT, MCSE, Linux+
(720) 333-LANS