On 20101201_215849, Peter Tenenbaum wrote: > I've been using dump to perform backups of my home Debian workstation (I run > squeeze, btw). I do a weekly level 0 dump and daily level 1 dumps. > > For some reason the level 1 backups are almost as large as the level 0 (the > level 0 is 57.9 GB and the level 1 is 51.6 GB), even though we clearly don't > modify anything like that many files in the interval from one day to the > next. The commands that I am using for these backups are of the form: > > dump -0u -f "/media/FreeAgent Drive/filename0" -A "media/FreeAgent > Drive/archive0" /dev/md3 > dump -1u -f "/media/FreeAgent Drive/filename1" -A "media/FreeAgent > Drive/archive1" /dev/md3 > > where /dev/md3 is my RAID1 array root partition. > > Any idea why the level-1 backups are almost as large as the level-0? > > Thanks in advance, > -PT
I don't use dump. I use rsync. Look into switching to rsync. With it I do a full backup of a 90 GB source tree every day. It takes under three (3) minutes each day to produce the new image of the full tree. When looking at rsync, notice particularly the --link-dest= option. This can be used to designate the backup from yesterday as a seed for the backup being done today. The first time it is run, the time to completion is similar to that of level 0 dump. But subsequent runs are much faster. You can do several level 1 rsyncs per day, if you wish. Use the -v option to tell rsync to tell you what it is doing. It will show a list of only those files that actually needed to be transfered, and a calculation of how much 'speed up' was achieved. Most of the new image is hard links to the same file in an older image. Since my data is pretty static, I have 300 daily backups in disk space that is about 110 GB. I use a 500 GB USB external drive for backup. Long before I run out of space, I will retire the disk merely because it will have become too old to be kept in use. HTH -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20101202150732.gd2...@big.lan.gnu