Back in Time: Essential Linux Backup Tool
As anyone who has ever listened to Security Now knows, backing up your data is incredibly important. It’s that one thing that seems completely unneccessary almost all of the time, especially if you never delete anything. Whenever your hard drive dies, however, you need a good solution to recover your data. Linux users love using rsync to sync to an external server but there doesn’t seem to have a great way to backup with a GUI to a local drive. When I found the program Flyback, I thought I had found my solution. However, I found it had a tendency to lock up at times for me. It also hadn’t been updated when I wanted to switch. Evidently someone forked it into a program called “Warpback”, but I haven’t seen any real work on that front.
After a bit of searching, though, I’ve found a nice updated program called Back in Time. I really like a lot of the features it supports. It’s written in python and uses rsync and diff to do its magic. One of the nice features of Back in Time is that it only updates files that have been updated since the last backup. This doesn’t seem like that huge of a thing, but it does it well. The only problem I’ve found is that the it won’t accept symlinks that link to outside of its directories–you’ll have to manually include that directory to be included. Other than that, it’s great! Check it out.