Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Could someone please suggest a backup strategy?

[Eric Jensen]

Hi Fred,

>     Thanks for responding.  Yes it seems you understood pretty well
> what i need.  So, if, after copying the original rdiff-backup to DVD,
> can i just run rdiff-backup again after, say, a week, and then just
> copy the rdiff-backup-data to the DVD (instead of the whole file
> structure again)?

No, that won't quite work as you intend - the backup directory contains
two things: a current copy of the file system you're backing up, and (in
the rdiff-backup-data directory) the necessary information to convert
the current copy of the filesystem back into an old copy (i.e. as of
previous backup dates) if you want to revert to a previous state.  So
just backing up the rdiff-backup-directory isn't that helpful without
also having the current copy of the files.

However, the strength of rdiff-backup is in backup to disks, not DVDs.
And since you're backing up to disk, you may not *always* need to also
write to DVD.  So you could do something like this:

* run rdiff-backup, say, every night to have a current copy of your
  files on a separate disk.

* then, write the whole backup to DVD or some other media less
  frequently (once a week?  once a month?  depends on your needs).  Note
  that this less-frequent external backup would still contain the
  information from all the previous backups, since all of those
  increments are saved separately in the rdiff-backup-data directory,
  unless you clear them out.

I hope this helps to clarify how rdiff-backup works.

Eric