Posts tagged rsync
Reasonable Backup Routines – Service and Desktop Integrity
Jan 27th
Image via Wikipedia
You should have backups of all your files all the time. For a desktop machine always have a backup of your entire /home partition. Use a cronjob and rsync. Mount a usb drive to the /media directory. Use a cronjob as follows:
1 1 0 0 0 rsync -r /home/user /media/backup/user
The above rsync will recursively transfer all folders and files from the user directory to /media/backup/user directory.
You should have at least 1 backup. You can also implement a raid 1 array in case of a hardware failure, which is highly unlikely but does indeed happen. My configuration involves a usb backup drive, mounted as above, and another machine that I rsync the backup to via the network.
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Spin Down USB Hdd – Ehh I don’t Think Its Working
Dec 23rd
Oh, given my previously elabored backup configuations I have one further thing I would like to do. Since backup 1, and 2 are only used once per day I would like to spin down the hard drivers to increase longevity. I figured dismounting the drive would be effective, but I have encountered several things. First, usb drives are auto mounted, therefore there is no entry in fstab, and no folder in /media. If you dismount backup1:
sudo umount /media/backup1
Now just before issuing the backup rsync I would like to mount the hdd and spinup the hard drives:
sudo mount /dev/sdg1 /media/backup1
But the platters still feel like they are spinning. There is a hum to the disk, and it remains warm as if the partition was still mounted. Maybe I’m confused as to what a spindown is? I would like the hdd to be pseudo disconnected, even the the cable is connected, and then pseudo connected when data transmission is required just before the backup routine.