On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 3:01 PM, Bryn M. Reeves <bmr@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>> I have got a new external hard disk, which I would like to use as >>> a mirror of my home directory (for backup purpose). What format >>> for the external disk filesystem do you recommend? And what the >>> proper command to accomplish the formatting? >>> >> >> ### End of Message from Paul Smith ### >> >> For best advice, more information would be helpful... For example, >> what's your retention policy? If you only need a single backup, >> and not historical backups *and* you are using LVM, you might >> consider just storing LVM snaphots on the backup drive. If you want >> a more flexible solution, you might try using rsync. Tar and dump >> are also still used. > > That would mean you would need to add the external disk to the system > VG (in order to be able to snapshot logical volumes from the system). > > Generally that's a bad idea: if you're spreading VGs over multiple > devices, especially with snapshotting, you typically want redundancy > below the VG (i.e. mirrored or RAIDed PVs). You could also use LVM > mirroring but then you're adding more complexity to the configuration. > > Things can also get ugly here if the backup disk is not going to be > present at all times (for one thing if you do ever add one to your > system VG you'll probably need to update the initramfs to ensure it > contains the required modules for the external device). > >> As far as your specific question, you need the name of the device, >> and I recommend creating a UDEV rule so that every time you plug in >> the external hard drivei, the partition you backup to gets the SAME >> link in /dev. This can save you from accidentally backing up to a >> thumbdrive that was also in the USB port, or maybe a different hard >> drive. Let's > > You can also just set a label on it - udisks and the modern desktop > environments will then mount it under the media directory with a name > based on the label and this will propagate to other systems you may > use the device on without the need to copy rules files around the place. Thanks for all replies. What I do is to run, from time to time, the following command: rsync -av --delete /home/psmith/ /media/IOmega/backups/myhome/ I have already an external disk formatted with ext3, but for safety reasons I am now wanting to have two external disks with the same backups. When I formatted the first external disk, I did not know about ext4 (only knew about ext3). So, from what you are suggestion, ext4 is superior to ext3? Paul -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org
