rdiff-backup

A remote incremental backup of all your files could be as easy as
"rdiff-backup / host.net::/target-dir"[disclaimer]

What is it?

rdiff-backup backs up one directory to another, possibly over a network. The target directory ends up a copy of the source directory, but extra reverse diffs are stored in a special subdirectory of that target directory, so you can still recover files lost some time ago. The idea is to combine the best features of a mirror and an incremental backup. rdiff-backup also preserves subdirectories, hard links, dev files, permissions, uid/gid ownership, modification times, extended attributes, acls, and resource forks. Also, rdiff-backup can operate in a bandwidth efficient manner over a pipe, like rsync. Thus you can use rdiff-backup and ssh to securely back a hard drive up to a remote location, and only the differences will be transmitted. Finally, rdiff-backup is easy to use and settings have sensical defaults.

Download:

rdiff-backup is GPLed (anyone can download it, redistribute it, etc.).

Current Status:

The earliest releases of rdiff-backup are more than four years old. Since then there have been more than 60 releases fixing bugs and adding features. The basic functionality on unix platforms has been tested by many people over this time and can be considered stable.

Many users seem to use rdiff-backup on MS Windows but this configuration is less well tested. Also features such as Mac OS X resource forks, Extended Attributes, and Access Control Lists have only been released about a year ago. There are no known bugs in these newer features, but they are not as thoroughly tested as the basic functionality.

Help:

Try looking at the Documentation, FAQ, and/or Wiki pages. If that doesn't help with your problem, try reading or posting a message to the mailing list.

Requirements: