Backing up to DVD under Linux
July 3, 2005 11:29 PM Subscribe
I've got a ~40G filesystem on a Linux machine. I'm looking for a solution that will let me backup to 4.7G DVD blanks - e.g., fill one disc, tell me to put in another, etc, until all of the data is copied to disc(s). I can do this easily with Dragon Burn under OSX with its "Span discs" option, but I'd like to find something similar for Linux. I know about cdrecord/proDVD, but last time I checked it didn't offer anything like this. Any suggestions?
Acronis TrueImage allows you to backup a drive/partition/whatever to an image (or multiple image files broken into whatever size files you desire), and then restore it from a bootable floppy/CD/etc.
I'm not sure if the bootable CD allows you to create images, or just restore them (although the product page says it supporst Ext2/3 and ReiserFS) -- so in your case, mrbill, you may or may not have to boot off a thin windows install to begin the backup. I'm not sure.
loquacious, it'll work fine for you. Configured in the default manner, it'll create 4.7GB files for you in another directory that you can burn to DVD later, or you can configure it to burn directly to DVD, kinda.
Acronis has said that direct-to-DVD backups will be supported natively Real Soon Now.
posted by Jairus at 3:43 AM on July 4, 2005
I'm not sure if the bootable CD allows you to create images, or just restore them (although the product page says it supporst Ext2/3 and ReiserFS) -- so in your case, mrbill, you may or may not have to boot off a thin windows install to begin the backup. I'm not sure.
loquacious, it'll work fine for you. Configured in the default manner, it'll create 4.7GB files for you in another directory that you can burn to DVD later, or you can configure it to burn directly to DVD, kinda.
Acronis has said that direct-to-DVD backups will be supported natively Real Soon Now.
posted by Jairus at 3:43 AM on July 4, 2005
Not answering the question you asked, but an alternative you should consider is backing up to a portable hard drive plugged in via USB or Firewire. It's just as portable, not very expensive, is less likely to suffer failed media, and saves you the hassle of splitting the archive. You can just do a cp -a, or if you want to be fancy and do multiple backups rsnapshot has your back.
posted by Nelson at 7:55 AM on July 4, 2005
posted by Nelson at 7:55 AM on July 4, 2005
Best answer: Looks like cdbackup will do the job of disk spanning if you already have cdrecord working. Just pipe cpio or afio to it.
posted by majick at 8:27 AM on July 4, 2005
posted by majick at 8:27 AM on July 4, 2005
Best answer: Bacula is the world's greatest backup software, and it supports writing to multiple DVDs.
posted by cmonkey at 8:36 AM on July 4, 2005
posted by cmonkey at 8:36 AM on July 4, 2005
Response by poster: Nelson, the filesystem in question is an rsnapshot repository (BEST SOFTWARE EVAR etc) of my colocated server (I'm in Houston, it's in Austin). I just want to dump things to archival media once a month or so.
cdbackup looks like the best thing so far, but I'll look into the other suggestions as well. Thanks!
posted by mrbill at 8:47 AM on July 4, 2005
cdbackup looks like the best thing so far, but I'll look into the other suggestions as well. Thanks!
posted by mrbill at 8:47 AM on July 4, 2005
This thread is closed to new comments.
I would really like to just be able to grab my whole 50+ gigs of mp3s as one folder, send it to an application and have it automatically start burning CDs one at a time until the whole folder is burned, without any split files, and without having to manually select groups of files over and over again just to make sure it fits on the media.
It would sure be nice to only have to pull out the burned cd, pop in the next blank, label the last burnt one and walk away until the next one is ready.
posted by loquacious at 2:22 AM on July 4, 2005