My favorites are:

caatinga (Found at https://github.com/headmastersquall/caatinga)
rsnapshot

because I like fast backups that maintain history of the file system. These tools also store the backups in a normal file system so you don't need to use special tools to restore data.

Although it only piggy-backs on rsync I had to give some love to fs-archiver. Great little tool. Even plays nice with Windows boot partitions. Version 0.7 will be something special when it is released!!

s3cmd and an account on http://dreamhost.com/cloud/dreamobjects/ or Amazon s3.

If the backup is on the same physical site as the data, and some disaster blows the whole house away, it doesn't matter how clever and diligent your backup practices are.

For those who haven't tried rsync, try this:

sudo rsync -c -r -t -p -o -g -v --progress --delete -l -s /source/dir/ /dest/dir

The only reason I didn't try rsync sooner is because it's got a bit of a "learning curve." Note the trailing slash on the source dir.

Love rsync!

:-)

rsync. How could you beat it? It does everything one would need for the purpose of backups and does it well.

clonezilla

Note that rsync (as cp) has a -a --archive option that does most of the work for backups (of course someone would come up with it, given its obvious usefullness). In particular, in rsync, -a equals -rtpoglD, which differs from yours in the only fact that it also preservers device nodes and special files in the process. So, you might get

which is easier to remember (putting "-av" is almost an immediate reflex when I write "rsync"). The --delete has its pros and cons, the -c (for checksumming) is nice, but I think that for cron jobs --progress is somewhat strange ;-) (though interesting in a one-shot)

Good calls, bernardofpc. :-)

I like almost everything the -a option does (including its fewer keystrokes), but I wonder what the benefit of copying directories without recursing (-d) is? Maybe I'm missing something.

I use this command to clone one drive of personal data to another, including removing junk files and such. For an incremental/archive backup, --delete is probably inappropriate. For my purposes, though, it keeps everything able to fit on one hard drive! :-)

I agree with you on the -c (MD5sum check) option, since it's quite slow and CPU-intensive. I only use it in a "one-shot" context. For a cron job, I'd almost certainly leave it out. It's good for "making extra sure," but not so much for anything else.

dd would be a nice addition to the list.

Good call, parkerlreed. Likewise, NTFSclone is great for using Linux to backup Windows boxes. Used it every day for a while, at a computer shop.

Agreed. I have no shortage of disk, so I prefer simply imaging most machines. It is the fastest full backup,
and restore for any major catastrophe (ie: dead drive ) by far.

But since you don't consider it as a candidate, I use rsync quite alot.

I use Synkron most of the time. Voted for rsync as it's my second favourite

Backintime. But I'm experimenting further. Years ago I used rsnapshot. I'll look again, when the polls are done.

<edit> Backintime is a GUI / frontend for rsync... </edit>

Ghost for Linux (g4l) is missing !

G4L has been added.

--jeremy