On Sun, Aug 14, 2022 at 6:44 PM Dale <[email protected]> wrote: > > I plan to buy another hard drive pretty soon. Next month is possible. > If there is nothing available that does what I want, is there a way to > use rsync and have it set to backup files starting with "a" through "k" > to one spot and then backup "l" through "z" to another? I could then > split the files into two parts.
Oh, I didn't comment on this part, so sorry for the double reply. If you need backups that span multiple disks your options are very limited unfortunately. Most linux backup software might output multiple files but it dumps them all in one place and much of it assumes that all the files are in one place for restoration. Here are the options I've found: 1. You can use lvm/zfs/btrfs/whatever to combine multiple disks to make them look like one disk. This is a workaround, and obviously you're limited to however many disks you can physically mount at one time. 2. You can use bacula, which does support changing media, since it was designed for tape, but unlike tar it can output to a directory. However, this is not very well-supported and it can be a pain. This is what I'm doing for large-scale backups. I basically treat a hard drive like a giant tape. It is fussy to set up and use, and bacula itself is VERY fussy to use. Oh, and make sure you REALLY understand it and do some restoration tests because otherwise you could paint yourself into a corner. I always backup my database, and I have the bacula software itself running in a container and after every backup I just create a tarball of the whole container and stick that on the backup disk (it isn't big, and that solves the bootstrapping problem). Don't ever use bacula to back up itself - it is terrible for that. 3. Obviously if you have a scratch disk big enough to hold everything temporarily that also works. You can do your backup, then copy it off to other drives however you want. -- Rich
