Rsync for incremental backups
Introduction Archiving files to tape is still considered one of the cheapest way of making backups. However with the prices of disk storage and solid-state storage decreasing rapidly, it won't be long before users make the switch to the faster disk storage for all thier backup needs. The problem, however, is that if you want to do anything more than mirroring data on a remote storage, there aren't too many good freeware tools to do it. This writeup explains one of the interesting ways to do incremental backups with snapshot cabability using a popular tool called rsync. Traditional Backup Traditional backup applications not only support backing up and restoring of files, directories, partitions and drives, but also allow incrementally backups to reduce time taken to backup large file systems. Since its not practical to restore the complete data from tape just to apply minor changes to it, most tape backup software store the differences in a seperate file or location on tape whic