[buug] Backups [Was: Trapped in Upgrade Hell]

[Jon McClintock]

On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 10:03:14AM -0800, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
> I agree, especially as I am trying to find a way to back up my new machine.
> I had a 4G DAT2 drive in the old one, it worked perfectly and saved my a**e
> many times.  But the new disc drive is 60G ...

Yeah, but of that 60G, how much of it will be irreplacable data? Unless
you're doing a large amount of media generation, I'm guessing not much.

The key is to recognize that it's no longer practical to back up your
entire system. The solution is to narrow down your backups to that which
is irreplacable, or hard to. 

So, for example, I back up /etc, and the portions of /var that contain
my Debian configuration. I backup homedirs, except for some directories 
that I've carved out (things like ~/tmp, and ~/downloads, etc). I backup
my pictures (since I don't have them burned to CD, although I should),
but not my mp3s (since they are exclusively burned from audio CDs for
which I have the originals).

For me, at least, this all fits onto my 6-tape HP DDS2 autoloader (with
4GB capacity per tape). 

Granted, this works because I'm not authoring huge amounts of media
(read: video).

-Jon