On 08/08/18 04:43, Dale wrote: > Howdy, > > > I just bought two external drive enclosures. One is sort of a spare but > I do plan to do some backups on it, mostly pictures from my camera. In > one of the enclosures I put a single 6TB drive that I found on ebay. It > has about 7,000 hours on it so it should have some life left yet and it > passed the smartctl tests. It is USB but it transfers fast. Now to > some questions. I use rsync. Command looks something like rsync -auv > /source/ /destination/. If I backup the config files in my home > directory, should I also include the --delete option? If after a > upgrade for example a config file is deleted, because it is no longer > needed, or renamed, should the old file be removed or is there a reason > to keep them on the backups? Adding the --delete option isn't a problem > command wise BUT I wonder if it can cause a problem at some point. > Thoughts on that. I plan to use the --delete option for videos since if > I deleted one, it is likely broken or something. Biggest question is > about config files. > May I suggest using btrfs for your backup drive? One MAJOR caveat - DO NOT let the drive fill up - a combination of snapshots and drive-full has been known (quite often) to trash the file system. But provided you make sure it doesn't go above about 80% you should be fine.
You can add an option to rsync such that it will back up "in place". In other words, if only 1K is changed in a 1M file, it will overwrite that 1K. So when you back up, the procedure is to take a snapshot, then run rsync with both "in place" and "delete". This will give you the space economy of incremental backups, combined with the utility of full backups - each snapshot is a full backup as of that date, but each new snapshot only increases disk usage by the changes since the last. And you reclaim space by deleting old snapshots. > On the second enclosure I currently have a 160GB drive. It's big enough > for my camera pictures. I would like to backup up my pics to it and > then put the drive somewhere besides in the house. I have a couple > external buildings that would be safe as far as rain etc but they are > not cooled, even tho it gets close to 100F and humid, real humid, here. > My question is this. Is it safe to store a drive in that sort of > environment? I could see the building getting close to outside temps > during the day. I do put a heater in it to prevent freezing during the > winter. I usually set the heat to 40F. I'm hoping someone has some > real world experience on storing in this sort of environment and not > just a text book theory. One reason I want to put them elsewhere, house > fire. Even a huge power strike could cause problems if plugged in. We > do get lightening strikes here. Maybe not as many as some but our fair > share. The 6TB and 3TB drive may join this one as well. > A drive that's shut down will take more mistreatment than one that is running. So no worries on that score. Plus heat causes far less problems than people think, although yes it's best avoided. Do your outbuildings have power? Do you have a fridge (or possibly freezer) out there, or could you find an excuse for one - a wine-store maybe :-) What you really want is some form of insulation that will prevent rapid fluctuations in temperature, and sticking your drives (in sealed bags) in a wine fridge would probably be near ideal. I had a cellar for my wine, and daily fluctuations were near nil even though there was a maybe 20C variation between summer and winter. That's what you want to aim for. Or maybe if you can dig a mini-cellar in one of your outbuildings :-) Cheers, Wol
