Back it up

[swestrup]

After having gone through a number of trials and tribulations, I think I finally have the hardware for the Ten Ton Tabulator sorted out. That's the name I finally gave to the 12 TB backup server I bought recently, mainly because its the heaviest computer I've ever owned, and the heaviest that the store has ever sold. The dang thing must weight 50+

Comments

[joenotcharles]

With 12 TB, I recommend you just suck it up and back up the junk + system files. These things don't change often so you'll only pay a one-time penalty - they won't be included in most incrementals. The only things that change often should be in /tmp and /var, which you can exclude at the root.

Sharing and syncing files aren't really the job of your backup system. Again with 12 TB you can probably get away with backing up a separate copy of each of the shared files for each computer.

[swestrup]

Well, when I do a "Full Backup" I will, indeed back up everything including most of the junk. But when I am sync'ing stuff between my laptop and my desktop, I really do need to distinguish between application data that genuinely needs to be synced (like firefox bookmarks) and what can be ignored (like firefox caches).

And seeing that I need to sync my desktop and laptop, and Linda likely will want to do something similar, and seeing how that is usually easier when using a server for it, the backup server seems the opportune choice.

Oh, and 12 TB is NOT MUCH STORAGE. It will not let me keep more than one copy of every unique file in the house. We really DO have LOTS of stuff stored.

[hendrikboom]

Better back up all your data first, just in case you mess up the reorganisation!

[swestrup]

Yeah, I've been very paranoid about that!