Chapter 9. Fundamental Backup Techniques

Table of Contents
9.1. Introduction
9.2. Moving your data to a backup device
9.2.1. Making a copy on a floppy disk
9.2.2. Making a copy with a CD-writer
9.2.3. Backups on/from jazz drives, USB devices and other removables
9.2.4. Backing up data using a tape device
9.2.5. Tools from your distribution
9.3. Using rsync
9.3.1. Introduction
9.3.2. An example: rsync to a USB storage device
9.4. Encryption
9.4.1. General remarks
9.4.2. Generate a key
9.4.3. About your key
9.4.4. Encrypt data
9.4.5. Decrypting files
9.5. Summary
9.6. Exercises

Accidents will happen sooner or later. In this chapter, we'll discuss how to get data to a safe place using other hosts, floppy disks, CD-ROMs and tapes. We will also discuss the most popular compressing and archiving commands.

Upon completion of this chapter, you will know how to:

  • Make, query and unpack file archives

  • Handle floppy disks and make a boot disk for your system

  • Write CD-ROMs

  • Make incremental backups

  • Create Java archives

  • Find documentation to use other backup devices and programs

  • Encrypt your data