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microspino
Asked: 2010-11-13 03:59:54 +0800 CST

Good way to reduce backup size

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I have a data mix of 100Gb to backup. Data inside it comprehend:

  • JPEG big photos (5Mb)
  • Autocad DWG files
  • some Word .doc
  • some Photoshop .PSD

All the data come from 5 win7/winXP in a 1000gb lan.

I need a sort of ideal ;) backup strategy that helps me in reducing the on-line backup storage costs (around 0.80$ per GB) and/or management time (I can burn a DVD every week but not more frequently than that). I got a small linux silent server with:

  • 120gb 2.5" hd for the o.s.
  • 2 x 250gb 2.5" hdd in soft raid 1 for that data
  • 1 external USB 500gb hd for backup

I could purchase a cloud backup plan. I can't purchase any Windows Server License.

Any suggestion is appreciated: Dropboxes, rsynch whatever could be included.

backup linux

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I feel like a BackupPC evangelist here nowadays, but here goes: BackupPC might help you. I don't know how you are actually planning to backup, but for the actual backup process BackupPC allows you to use rsync, tar, smb or nfs as transfer mechanism.

    It also has an "Archive host" function, which would allow you to archive the backups for off-site purposes, perhaps to that 500 GB external USB HD?

    Anyway, your backup needs seems to be so modest that BackupPC will handle them without sweat. It can also detect duplicate files and physically store them only once, which will spare you the precious HD space.

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  2. External Harddrive and Rsync would seem quite enough for your needs..

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  3. I rotate backups to a few external HDDs and take at least one offsite. They are Bitlockered so the data should be safe. I have used Acronis True Image for years and it has been very good.

    Explicitly exclude AutoCAD .bak files. They are the previous copy of the DWG file. That should save you some space.

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