Is there a file system that stores files under a hash so there are no duplicates? It can be under any operating system. I know Git does that, but I'm looking for something that can run in real-time.
I have been looking at versioned filesystems but I can't find any information on how to back them up. If my disk dies and I have to restore from a backup, I want to be able to restore the filesystem completely, including the past versions of all files.
Obviously the traditional methods like cp and rsync won't work, since they'll only copy the current version (right?). The only other thing I can think of would be to unmount the filesystem and use dd, but that's very inconvenient.
I've long thought about versioning file systems. This is a killer feature and I've looked at Wayback, ext3cow, zfs, fuse solutions, or just cvs/svn/git overlays.
I consider ext3cow the model for my requirements. Transparent, efficient, but I can do without the extra ls abc@timestamp feature. As long as I somehow get automated, transparent versioning of my files.
It could be instantaneous or it could be based on snapshots on intervals of 10s, 30s, 1m, 5m, 15m, etc. Just something that will efficiently deal with thousands of files in a given directory all of various sizes, most small, but some upwards of 100m to 1gb.
ZFS isn't really an option as I'm on linux (and would prefer not to use it through fuse as I already have an ext3 setup I want to version, not something new).
What solutions are out there?
I am looking for a versioning file system like VMS used to have. Are there any modern equivalents I can host for Windows clients? Requirements:
Ability to map a drive to the shared file system from XP, Vista, Win7, Samba (Linux)
Ability to host this file system either on a Windows Flavor, or CentOS
Completey transparent to the end users - looks like a normal drive / share. I am sure I could hack something together with something like SVN, but it would not be transparent.
I have searched Google, and here and found nothing so far.
Are there any particular security concerns to keep in mind with company-wide use of Dropbox file sharing / versioning / backing up, and are there specific options or settings that would be recommended to limit the risk?