Wednesday, November 07 2007 @ 05:56 PM EST Contributed by: sde
Everyone knows they should make regular backups of their data. But hardly anyone is as diligent with backups as they should be. So in this two-part series we're going to learn some nice simple methods for making regular backups on single PCs or small networks. Part 1 covers external backup media, and bending udev to your will so that your backup devices will have persistent names. Part 2 will reveal fast, easy, reliable ways to run your backups, both automated and on-demand by clicking a button.
The type of backups we're going to make are also easy to restore files from, which is the whole point of having backups in the first place. The backups we're going to make are for short-term archiving, which means the useful life of your backup media. Making data archives for the ages is a separate problem; our goal here is to be able to make easy, fast backups, and to quickly recover from a hardware failure, theft, and other immediate problems.
