[DM-MUG] Fwd: Dr. Mac's Guide to Backing Up Your Mac -- The Mac Observer

[kristau]

Since we are sharing backup strategies, here's mine:

I do not back up the System or Applications folders, just my User
folder and various detachable media such as a USB flash drive and a
small external hard drive.  My reasoning is I can re-install the OS
and applications from discs or downloads.  Because this is my home
system, time to restore is not as critical as it would be for a
business or production system.

I come from more of a linux background, so I'm utilizing the built-in
rsync utility to script my backups.  I've written a series of small
backup scripts in bash for each target I want to back up.  I then have
a "master script" that calls each of these scripts in turn.  Here's a
simple outline of what each of these scripts do:

Small backup scripts:
1) Check to see if the backup media (400 GB external USB HD) is
available.  Mount if available, exit if not.
2) rsync the target data to the correct place on the destination.
3) Unmount the backup media.

Master script:
1) Call the first script.
2) Run the compact process against the backup media (it is an
encrypted sparse image).
3) Call the second script.
4) Compact.
etc.

The compact process can be time-consuming, but it is necessary to pull
out any space freed up during the rsync process so the sparse image
doesn't outgrow the available space before the end of the backup.

My backups are not currently automated because I have a laptop, and it
is not always connected to the external hard drive (not really an
excuse,though).

Recently, I discovered a utility called RsyncX
(http://archive.macosxlabs.org/rsyncx/rsyncx.html) which appears to
provide a good front end for generating rsync scripts.  It also has
some built in scheduling and incremental backup features for
automating.  I've not played with it yet, but it looks promising.  It
appears to provide all the power (and then some) of rsync without
having to muck about with bash scripts like I did.  Perhaps I can give
a presentation on it once I've had a chance to thoroughly run it
through its paces.

On a different note, I enjoyed attending the February meeting, and I
plan on trying to make it to more meetings in the future.

thanks,
kristau
-- 
Tired programmer
Coding late into the night
The core dump follows

My GNUPG public key is available at http://www.kristau.net/public_key.asc