5/30/2023 0 Comments Rsync sync folders![]() It’s one of the most used ‘tools’ in the UNIX world and almost a standard for syncing data. Most Linux distros have rsync pre-installed, but if it’s not there you can install the ‘rsync’ package for your distribution. Rsync stands for remote sync which was written by Andrew Tridgell and Paul Mackerras back in 1996. I also tend to keep things as simple as possible, so the tool I use for my back-up is ‘rsync’. There are many GUI tools some come preinstalled on many distros, but since I run a headless file server I use command line tools and that’s what I am going to talk about in this article. The first thing I do is make a backup of my files and configure my systems to make regular backups automatically. Now once I have decided to keep my data local and under my control it becomes increasingly important to ensure that I will not lose a byte of it. I won’t have to worry about paying bandwidth for accessing my own data or fear of being locked out. I can buy a 4TB NAS hard drive for under $160 and that will last me 3 to 4 years. I do use private cloud but that’s mostly for the data that I want accessible outside the local network or which is shared with others. Private cloud like ownCloud or Seafile can be an option but once again, since your data left your network it is exposed to the rest of the world and, as usual, it will incur heavy bandwidth use and storage costs. Your service provider gains control over your data and can lock you out of your own data for numerous reasons – most notably some ambiguous copyright violations. That’s not the only problem with public cloud, the moment you start using such services your data becomes subject to numerous laws and can be accessed by government agencies without your knowledge. The biggest danger is that then once you stop paying, you lose your data. Cost is not the only deterrent I will also consume huge amounts of bandwidth to access that data which may raise eyebrows from my ISP. I would have to pay over $120 per year for 1TB of data or $100 per month for 10TB on Google Drive. ![]() First of all, I have over 3 terabytes (TB) of data and it would be extremely expensive for me to buy 3 TB of cloud storage. ![]() I would not use public or third-party cloud as the primary backup of my data for various reasons. While working on this story I interviewed many users to understand their data-backup plans and I discovered some used public cloud as their primary backup. It takes only one click to make a copy of your data and you can carry terabytes of data on a hard drive smaller than your wallet. I wish they had digital versions of those things which we could have saved. I know friends who have lost all of their photographs, books and documents in fires or floods. One of the advantages of the digital world, compared to the physical world is that you can protect some of your ‘valuables’ from permanent loss.
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