"Martin Gregorie"  wrote in message
news:rj5c4b$bp9$1@dont-email.me...
> On Mon, 07 Sep 2020 11:31:08 +0100, NY wrote:
>
>> I also started making a disk image of the card every few months so I
>> could go straight back to a reasonably recent state without needing to
>> reinstall.
>>
> Assuming you're making backups with dd or tar, zip etc, you might want to
> look into using rsync instead:
>
> - its faster because it does the minimum work needed to bring your last
>  backup up to date
>
> - its more flexable because its copying files and directories into a
>  backup filing system which gives you direct access, should you need it,
>  to individual files on the backup volume and recovery to a differently
>  sized disk partition is a lot easier than doing so from a backup made
>  with dd.

I backup data files on the Pi (weather station files) most days using MS
SyncToy on Windows, via a SAMBA share on the Pi.

I was wondering what equivalent software was available on Unix for doing
incremental / differential backups, so your posting has come at a useful
time.

I agree that a file-and-folder copy onto the backup device is a lot more
convenient than a backup that saves everything into one humungous file that
needs specialised software (as opposed to a simple COPY or the equivalent)
to recover and restore it.



But we're talking about two different things. My copy of the SD card (made
by removing the card, inserting it into a Windows computer and running Win32
Disk Imager) is to restore a fully-working, bootable system, as opposed to
backing up specific user-created files that cannot be restored by
reinstalling OS and packages.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05