Comment 17 for bug 191681

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Andrew Stromme (astromme) wrote : Re: [Bug 191681] Re: If an external drive is used for backups, Timevault will write backups if the drive is not present

On Friday 02 January 2009 13:10:21 Daniel Stiner wrote:
> nanolight, there is no need to excuse your English. There are some who pick
> up English as a second or even third language, and as such do speak it with
> odd grammar, bad spelling and such, but your English is in fact near
> superb. The Trunk of TimeVault is currently somewhat usable, but especially
> for something as large as your /home directory, I would currently recommend
> some other kind of backup method. Andrew Stromme has been putting in some
> work on revising TimeVault from the core out, but he as yet does not have a
> stable finished product.

I'll add my 2 cents here as well.

If you feel comfortable working with a non-released branch my timevault-
external branch has basic support for external devices. I haven't messed with
any of the actual backup code so it shouldn't mess with your data at all, but
I can't guarantee that. There is more information at the branch
https://code.launchpad.net/~astromme/timevault/timevault-external .

Secondly, I have been working on a different backup program that originally had
some of the same goals as timevault but has now deviated quite a bit. I have
some preliminary work up at https://launchpad.net/timevaultng but nothing
close to usable by what I would consider the 'target' audience.

With luck, I'll have more time to work on my next gen concept of timevault
more in the coming weeks.

At the moment, I would suggest one of two things.
A: Use the released version of TimeVault if you like the concept of 'always
backing up'. As long as you stop the timevault daemon while your drive is
unplugged you should be fine.

B: Learn rdiff-backup and put it in a simple script. That is what I am doing
for the time being as it is really flexible. It is also what I am building
timevaultng around so you will have a head start on the concepts that will be
useful.

Andrew Stromme