Haggis Veteran Posted October 2, 2012 Veteran Share Posted October 2, 2012 Ok was not sure wether to post this here as it linux i use or in the hardware bit I have been reading about a few backup utilities wihin linux itself and a few programs too basically what i want to do is this I have a small USB hub that has 4 ports I want to plug 3*32gb USB drives into that hub 1 for photos 1 for documents 1 for files I will set up the back up software to back up particular folder to each drive BUT how do i make sure that when i turn on my laptop it will mount the drives in the same way as it did so that each folder is backed up to the correct usb drive? I am not keen on using mechanical drives for this as one of my backup drives failed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ichi Posted October 2, 2012 Share Posted October 2, 2012 Since usb drives might get different device names when you plug them, you'll have to use UUIDs. First plug one of the USB devices, check what device name it got and run blkid to get the UUID. Eg. if it was /dev/sdc1 you'd do: blkid /dev/sdc1 And you'd get something like this: /dev/sdc1: UUID="6494BFE994BFBC3C" LABEL="usbdrive" TYPE="vfat" Use that UUID in /etc/fstab to configure the mount point: UUID=6494BFE994BFBC3C /home/user/usbdisk/ vfat defaults,auto,umask=000,users,rw 0 0 Repeat with each of the USB devices. simplezz 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haggis Veteran Posted October 2, 2012 Author Veteran Share Posted October 2, 2012 Awesome also looking at automatic backups to dropbox too i am assuming UUID never changes? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ichi Posted October 2, 2012 Share Posted October 2, 2012 That UUID is an unique identifier for partitions, it won't change as long as that partition on that drive also doesn't (eg. deleting the partition and creating a new one). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haggis Veteran Posted October 2, 2012 Author Veteran Share Posted October 2, 2012 Cool thanks :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simplezz Posted October 2, 2012 Share Posted October 2, 2012 also looking at automatic backups to dropbox too You could set a cron job to copy whatever data you want to backup to the dropbox folder at a specific time/date or day of week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haggis Veteran Posted October 2, 2012 Author Veteran Share Posted October 2, 2012 yeah was just looking at that just have it compress the folder and move it to the dropbox folder trying to think of a way to keep it clean as in just do incremental backups Simple Linux backup does that :D i am right in saying incremental backup will replace any news files etc but if i modify a file will it pick up that its been changed and replace that file too? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simplezz Posted October 2, 2012 Share Posted October 2, 2012 yeah was just looking at that just have it compress the folder and move it to the dropbox folder The best thing to do is have cron run a backup script. The script should tar -czf <dir>, then cp it to ~/dropbox/ or where ever you want to put it. Here's a good article on using cron: http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2009/06/15-practical-crontab-examples/ trying to think of a way to keep it clean as in just do incremental backups Not too difficult. Just use differential archives. i am right in saying incremental backup will replace any news files etc but if i modify a file will it pick up that its been changed and replace that file too? Yes. That's the gist of it. Basically, tar's ( -g --listed-incremental FILE ) switch allows you to do precisely that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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