Just to clarify -- this is my home system, nothing critical here. I'm
planning on keeping the external USB HD connected and in use all the
time, but for files where access speed isn't critical, like virtual
machines, downloads, and backups. Not backups of everything, just the
stuff I can't easily replace (e.g. email, config files, custom scripts),
since I can always reinstall the OS and the apps. ATM my typical backup
is /boot, /etc, /home, /root, /usr/local. (Any better ideas would be
welcomed!)
I only expect to need the backups if my system dies, which means I'd be
connecting it to another box, no idea whose or which, and so I can't
assume anything about how that box will be set up (except that it better
have a USB port!). Therefore, my backups on the USB HD will need to be
accessible to whatever OS that machine may be running, and need to be
able to be uncompressed and extracted on that machine.
Chris Knadle wrote:
By "portability" I'm thinking of being able to plug it into some
other box (could be any OS) and reading files from it, so I think a
USB drive would be a lot easier to connect to an unfamiliar
machine.
With a USB
drive the client OS needs to support the filesystem on the USB drive
directly.
Okay, that answers one question. It looks like the filesystem for the
partition with the backups should be FAT32, since Linux, Windows and (so
I'm told) Macs can access it natively. It also looks like 'tar' can
handle both the archiving and the compression, and there are programs to
undo that for all those OSs, which I will also put on that partition.
Well, if you don't plan on actually using the USB drive very often,
then mounting it at every boot is probably unnecessary.
I'm planning on using the drive often, and mounting it at boot. What I
don't expect to be doing a lot is disconnecting it and attaching it to
another machine. Also, I realize I should keep on doing regular backups
to removable media, with a few stored offsite.
Again, if anyone out there can suggest any improvements, they'd be
gratefully appreciated. (As long as they're not too far beyond my
current capabilities!) Other than that, I think I have things under
control here. Thanks again, everyone!
Adam
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