On 17 Jan 2024 14:52 -0500, from hunguponcont...@gmail.com (Default User): > I am writing as someone who has lost data more than once over time, for > various reasons. The loss has ranged from slightly annoying, to soul- > rending catastrophe. It is NEVER appreciated.
I think this gets closer to the root of what you're trying to achieve: it sounds to me as though no matter what happens, you want to have a restorable backup which you can trust to (reasonably well) match the state of the source at the time when that backup was taken. That is a commendable goal. Twiddling with options to rsync won't offer you that in light of several of the scenarios you listed, though; not least a lightning strike. A lightning strike will blow out the drive just as much no matter what options you're using to invoke rsync. What you need is really rather multiple copies. I suggest to get a second drive to use for backup purposes along with the one you currently have. Only ever connect one of them at the same time to data or power anywhere. Ideally, always keep at least one of them in a separate location, powered off and disconnected. That way, if you mess up one, or if one of them fails (for any reason), or whatever else might happen, you have the other. It might not be quite as up to date, but it will be in a known-good state. For less drastic failures, really, look at rsnapshot. It's a wrapper around rsync which makes maintaining multiple revisions of a backup much easier. (It essentially passes to rsync with --link-dest, and manages the respective root directories.) -- Michael Kjörling 🔗 https://michael.kjorling.se “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”
