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nitefrog
Asked: 2011-12-04 02:14:10 +0800 CST

File Sync Between Multiple Drives and Computers

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Since I have left Windows, I am looking for a software that will replace ViceVersa. I need something that is highly recommended for file syncing among the Linux / Ubuntu users as I am new to this area.

What do you recommend? Which is the best? I read about one called rsync and another called Conduit.

If possible I would also like a tool that would have GUI interface, and once I get more familiar with Linux a command line sync utility would also be good.

Main goal is to backup everything local, nothing on line, but all backups that are local will be to external disks and syncing between computers.

Another feature would be able to see a preview of what is ready to be backed up / synced before it actually executes the operation.

Thanks...

filesystem

1 Answers

  1. Deja-Dup (aka Backup in the latest versions of Ubuntu) can do your first round of backups very easily. They'll let you copy your data to another partition if that's what you want to do.

    To backup your backups on other computers, I'd probably recommend something like rsync. It's command-line based but it'll make things easier in the long run :)

    rsync -avz -e ssh /local/backup/dir/ remoteuser@remotehost:/remote/backup/

    Notes about this method:

    • You'll need openssh-server installed on each machine.
    • You'll want to set up SSH key authentication so you're not faffing around with passwords all the time. Perhaps make a "backup" user on each machine to keep things more secure and separate if you're dealing with more than one real person.
    • Schedule this using crontab -e

    Alternatively you can use a different filesystem for your backup location. There are emerging filesystems that act as a distributed filesystem to keep copies of the data on multiple nodes. This is more commonly used in SANs than backup scenarios, but it might be worth a look. One example is FineFS.

    Also - useful reading:

    Comparison of backup tools

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