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Date:      Thu, 10 May 2007 08:32:23 -0700 (PDT)
From:      L Goodwin <xrayv19@yahoo.com>
To:        Roland Smith <rsmith@xs4all.nl>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Backing up Samba share to USB jump drive?
Message-ID:  <236053.77135.qm@web58107.mail.re3.yahoo.com>
In-Reply-To: <20070510055928.GA38309@slackbox.xs4all.nl>

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Thanks, Roland.

--- Roland Smith <rsmith@xs4all.nl> wrote:

> On Wed, May 09, 2007 at 06:10:53PM -0700, L Goodwin
> wrote:
> > Here's another round of dumb questions for ya:
> > 
> > Can USB jump drives be used to back-up a Samba
> share?
> > If so, what do I need to do to prepare the USB
> drive
> > to accept files? 
> > Since I don't really need to compress or encrypt,
> I
> > was thinking about simply copying the entire
> directory
> > tree using the cp command, instead of using dump,
> tar,
> > cpio.
> 
> If you don't want to save multiple versions of the
> same tree (from
> different dates), you could use rsync. It might be a
> lot quicker than cp
> because it skips files that haven't changed since
> the last backup.
> 
> But unless your collection of files is almost as
> large as the USB drive,
> I would keep saving backups of different dates (with
> tar & gzip) until
> you run out of space and have to start deleting
> older backups.
> 
> > Will this work, and is it a "good idea"?
> 
> Certainly.
>  
> > The filesystem to be backed up is a single common
> UFS
> > shared via Samba. All PC users have access to the
> same
> > set of files (no user-specific directories). The
> files
> > to be backed up are Word, Excel, PDF, etc.
> > 
> > I don't want to buy the drives until I know if it
> will
> > work and how to do it. Do I need to UFS format the
> > drives? I assume the drive will have to be mounted
> > like any other drive...
> 
> Reformatting as UFS seems a good idea. Most drives
> come with a FAT32
> filesystem, which has to use large clusters (16 or
> 32k) on bigger
> drives. This can waste a lot of space if you're
> backing up lots of small
> files. Have a look at
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#FAT32
> 
> Additionally, you'll have to recompile the kernel to
> support FAT32
> filesystems >128GB, IIRC.
> 
> Roland
> -- 
> R.F.Smith                                  
> http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
> [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed
> email much appreciated]
> pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914  B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321
> A725 (KeyID: C321A725)
> 



 
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