The Road to Ubuntu - Backup Hell

Adam Turner
Tuesday, 23 October 2007 14:09

Opinion and Analysis

My journey from XP to Ubuntu has stalled as I fight with Gutsy Gibbon to recreate my file backup regime under Linux.

I'm very anal when it comes to data backups. Under XP, I use Handy Backup to automate a series of backup tasks. As a wordsmith I work with text files, using NoteTab Pro, which keeps file sizes down and is cross-platform friendly. I keep the all the text files I'm currently working on in the one folder, which is backed up to a 1GB SD card in a card reader in the PC Card slot of my ThinkPad T60. I autosave and back up these files to the SD card every 10 minutes, and keep a few days worth. This means I only lose a few minutes work if my hard drive fails (which has already happened to my ThinkPad once). If I've got a deadline looming I can just pull out the SD card, move to another computer, keep working and worry about the failed hard drive later.

Of course this system doesn't help if I lose the ThinkPad (such as fire or theft), so every 30 minutes I back up my current files to the web via FTP. I also back up my entire Documents and Settings folder to a network drive every night, plus to DVD once a week which is then stored off site. Like I said, I'm very anal when it comes to backups. It's an approach that's saved my skin more than once.

I've decided to see if Ubuntu can meet my needs, but recreating this backup regime under Gutsy Gibbon is proving quite a challenge. The people behind Handy Backup are working on a Linux version, but until it's available I'll have to come up with something else. I'm not prepared to start using Ubuntu for work until I get a satisfactory backup regime in place.

I've tried a few backup programs, but none seem to meet all my needs. The main problem is that I want to backup a folder stored on my FAT32 data drive to an external device (my data is on a FAT32 drive so I can boot into XP or Ubuntu and access my files). Some basic backup applications won't let me backup more than once a day, which just isn't often enough for my liking - a whole day's work is just too much to lose. Others won't nominate a source folder that doesn't lie within the Ubuntu file system, so they're off my list straight away because they won't read my data from the FAT32 partition. (I didn't realise until later that auto-mounting them into a folder within the Ubuntu file system would get around this, but that creates a whole new set of problems.)

After a bit of searching I came across rsnapshot, which is built on the respected rsync backup tool and should do what I want. I followed the instructions on the site, as well as a few really good guides like this one on Technetra, but I'm obviously just too much of a newbie to get it to work. Again I suspect it's got to do with the fact that I'm trying to backup to and from unusual places. After a while I put it in the too hard basket and decided to keep looking.

Next I started to play Unison, which seems to be a peer of rsnapshot's. It even has the option of an idiot-proof GUI, which is always a good sign for a newbie. Unison let me nominate both my source and target folders and everything looked promising until I went to run the backup. CONTINUED