Ivan Voras wrote: > Warning: DO NOT do on-the-fly binary backups without snapshots. > Archiving the database directory with tar on a regular file system, > while the server is running, will result in an archive that most likely > won't work when restored. You can do non-snapshot-based filesystem level backups with pg_start_backup() and pg_stop_backup() as part of a PITR setup. See: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/continuous-archiving.html That's the setup I use, with a full backup taken weekly and WAL files archived from then until the next full backup. There is always at least one full backup at any time in case a backup fails, and I can roll back in time for a minimum of a week if anything goes wrong. I also include plain SQL dumps from pg_dump in the nightly disaster recovery backups. -- Craig Ringer -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance