I use cp and an external hdd for backups
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
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Y’all don’t seem to know about rsbackup, which is a terrible shame for you.
(I mean the one on greenend.org.uk!)
If you want rsync but shiny, check out rshiny
But if you're working with Linux you're going to need to know it.
Nope. I never have needed to know it. I only ever used it because I was either curious to know how to use it or because it was more convenient than other solutions. But scp is basically just as convenient.
It doesn't do diffs, so it's really bad if there's a lot of duplicate data.
If you want to use it for backups, there are other solutions, so you still don't need to use it or know it. You can use something else. That's my only point. 🤷♂️
And "really bad" is all relative. If you are only backing up your home drive with documents or whatever, copying a few unnecessary gigabytes over a LAN connection isn't too bad at all. But scp isn't what you should be using for backups anyway. I only used rsync for file transfer...
I use rsync for all kinda of things:
- deploying static files to a public webserver (blog or whatever)
- backups - scheduled systems/cron task w/ SSH key
- copying stuff from a USB drive
I only really use scp if the system doesn't already have rsync.
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Here’s how I approach old and slow:
- Older software is mature and battle tested. It’s been around long enough that the developers should know what they’re doing, and have built a strong community for help and support.
- Slow is okay when it comes to accuracy. Would I love to back up my gigabytes (peanuts compared to some of you folks out there with data centers in your attics) in seconds? Yes. But more importantly, I’d rather have my data be valid for if I ever need to do any kind of restore. And I’ve been around the block enough times in my career to see many useless backups.