Hi,
I currently use a program called copywhiz on windows that backs up any files or directories created after a certain date to a usb hard drive and runs once a day.
I want to transition fully to Linux. Is there any easy to use software that works on Linux that can do this?
P.S. I have tried creating a bash script to do this but for some reason it has trouble with the date part. So a software solution would be prefered.
I like restic, haven’t seen it mentioned yet.
I’m pretty sure there are lots of options that work great. I personally just use rsync-but I know the command line is scary for a lot of people making the transition. There are lots of options like timeshift that basically put a gui wrapper around rsync. I’ve seen a lot of love for borg as well - maybe try one of those two.
I feel backups are personal and it’s hard to get a “just do this instruction”. You’ll probably have to pick a product, and then do some homework to see if it can do what you want. This is further complicated by the distro you use - or more specifically if your distro uses btrfs. Some people use a backup as a sort of snapshot, and btrfs is more full featured than ext in that regard.
Good luck!
If the aim is simply to mirror an existing directory, including mirroring suppression/deletions/new files/edits, and only copying what has changed (which is what I suspect you were trying to emulate with the “created after a certain date” thing), just do:
rsync -avh -P /path/to/source/ /path/to/destination
If the aim is to copy all files created since, say, three days ago, but not to update existing files or to remove files that have been removed from your source (which is what you described):
rsync -avh -P --ignore-existing --files-from=<(find -L /path/to/source -ctime -3 -exec basename {} \;) /path/to/source/ /path/to/destination
Edit: lemmy is html encoding my “lesser than” symbol in the second command above; replace accordingly
Timeshift is for a system backup, in case your system broke for whatever reason you could get back quickly to your work without rebuilding and reconfiguring it. It’s not ment for backing up user files.
It’s built on top of rsync, you can easily configure it to make a backup of any arbitrary set of files
I think that for your use case (backing up to an external USB drive) great option would be something based on Borg.
Vorta and Pika Backup are great graphical tools for Borg program, with the first being more advanced while the latter being simplier.
