Daniel Carrera wrote at about 21:57:23 +0200 on Friday, May 22, 2009:
 > Jeffrey J. Kosowsky wrote:
 > > Not sure if you yet realize this, but BackupPC actually does
 > > more than just hard links and compression. Specifically,
 > > 
 > > 1. It has the notion of a "pool" so that common files between multiply
 > >    backed up computers are only copied once. When you have multiple
 > >    Windows and/or Linux computers, this saves a lot of backup space.
 > 
 > Yeah. I didn't mention this (and other features) because it didn't seem 
 > relevant to me. I only have two computers to backup and I'm only backing 
 > up the home directories, so there aren't almost any files in common.
 > 
 > 
 > > 2. Incrementals only contain hard links for new files vs. your system
 > >    where every day you create a new hard link for every single
 > >    file.
 > 
 > Ok. I didn't know this. Is there any benefit to the BackupPC method? I 
 > kind of like my system because it makes it really easy to find a file in 
 > the backup, as it gives the illusion of a full daily backup.
 > 
 > AFAIK there is no harm in making hard links. You are just consuming inodes.
 > 

And if you are doing daily backups of a lot of stuff then you can run
out of inodes. In fact, even for BackupPC, people have run out of
inodes.

Also, I imagine it is slower since rsync just looks for changed files
while 'cp -al' needs to create all those hard links.

On the other hand, if you are just backing up home directories on two
computers, BackupPC may be overkill.

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