Program to sync data with external drive?

[Zeikcied]

I'm preparing to upgrade to Jaunty from Intrepid, and I recently bought an external hard drive. (Mainly so I can backup and reformat my old FAT32 partitions to either ext3 or ext4, as well as do a clean install of Jaunty.) But I'd like to keep using the external as a more regular backup in case of hard drive failure, and I'd rather have a program keep track of the changes I've made.

So I'm looking for a program (preferably with a KDE/Qt-based front-end) that can easily sync data with my external drive. I would also prefer if it could be set to sync or ignore specific directories. Also, I don't plan on having the external connected all the time, nor do I want the program to start syncing the minute I plug the drive in.

I don't know if I'm being too specific. I have no clue about this.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: Program to sync data with external drive?

Grsync is what I have been using... there is a Qt equivalent, but I don't think it is maintained.

Grsync is in the standard repos.

The only thing I hate about it is the Source and Destination fields could be a little better defined to avoid the huge blunder. Always run the simulation first and see what is changing... sometimes between releases the spaces in device name are handled different and so it thinks the destination is empty...

Oh yeah, there is also a Mac-like "Time-Machine" app coming soon... to KDE 4.3 maybe? I forget the name of it TimeVault, but you might want to search around for such a thing.

https://answers.launchpad.net/timevault/+question/9239 Perhaps it is not coming soon after all.

Perhaps you could find something in the thread:
http://forum.kde.org/kde-alternative...e-t-24818.html

[askrieger]

Re: Program to sync data with external drive?

The program that I don't use often enough is "dar".

Full featured archiver with support for differential backups, slices, compression, ATTR/ACL support. DAR also supports Pipes for remote operations, including with ssh.

It is in the repos. The reason I like it is that it understands the concept of "differential backups", i.e. it only recopies things that have changed since the last full backup. When I was in business and it mattered, I used to do a full backup of my hd every week and differential backups at close of business every day. My schedule now is somewhat more "relaxed".

[Zeikcied]

Re: Program to sync data with external drive?

Grsync is what I have been using... there is a Qt equivalent, but I don't think it is maintained.

Grsync is in the standard repos.

The only thing I hate about it is the Source and Destination fields could be a little better defined to avoid the huge blunder. Always run the simulation first and see what is changing... sometimes between releases the spaces in device name are handled different and so it thinks the destination is empty...

Oh yeah, there is also a Mac-like "Time-Machine" app coming soon... to KDE 4.3 maybe? I forget the name of it TimeVault, but you might want to search around for such a thing.

https://answers.launchpad.net/timevault/+question/9239 Perhaps it is not coming soon after all.

Perhaps you could find something in the thread:
http://forum.kde.org/kde-alternative...e-t-24818.html

I installed grsync. It seems to have what I wanted. Specific directory backup, an option to ignore existing files (as in only copy over the new files), among other things. It has a basic look, but that doesn't really matter as long as it works properly. It's a shame the Qt version isn't active (though I didn't check, myself, and am just going by what you said).

Thanks.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: Program to sync data with external drive?

...It's a shame the Qt version isn't active (though I didn't check, myself, and am just going by what you said).

Thanks.

Oh dear god, please never listen to me!

There it is... the Qt4 version even... revised three weeks ago.
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show...?content=68586

I swear though when I was looking a month or two ago the thing was last updated in 2007. Sorry I didn't check for you sooner. I don't think this version is in the repos though... but probably wrong there too.