rsync

I think Bacula takes the win here. True enterprise grade, sports clients for both *nix and Winwoes so works in mixed environments. Then probably Amanda. Although admittedly I have not used either much as of late. Both would be massive overkill if you're just backing up a single workstation.

My $0.02

Peace--

You're hard core! Most companies aren't even that diligent.

I didn't vote because none is best -- rather it is a question of "horses for courses", that is which best meets the requirements.

We used to use amanda, rdiff-backup and rsync. I personally use Bacula, rsync and SpiderOak (a cloud backup service).

We have now almost completed migrating away from amanda and rdiff-backup to rsync run by a script which adds retention. The motivation is that neither amanda nor rdiff-backup are robust when they are interrupted while they are running; that is a problem because some of our clients shut down their systems while backups are running and our Internet connections are not reliable.

Comparing the tools I know:

• amanda
  • Compresssed backup files: yes
  • Ease of configuration: yes
  • Graphical interface: no
  • Network loading: not known
  • Point in time restore: yes
  • Poor cousin to the commercial edition: yes
  • Retention: yes
  • Robust when interrupted: no
• bacula
  • Compresssed backup files: yes
  • Ease of configuration: no
  • Graphical interface: yes
  • Point in time restore: yes
  • Network loading: not known
  • Poor cousin to the commercial edition: no
  • Retention: yes
  • Robust when interrupted: not known
• rdiff-backup
  • Compresssed backup files: no
  • Ease of configuration: yes
  • Graphical interface: no
  • Network loading: minimal
  • Point in time restore: yes
  • Poor cousin to the commercial edition: not applicable
    [*[Retention: yes
  • Robust when interrupted: no
• rsync
  • Compresssed backup files: no
  • Ease of configuration: yes
  • Graphical interface: no
  • Network loading: minimal
  • Point in time restore: no
  • Poor cousin to the commercial edition: not applicable
  • Retention: no
  • Robust when interrupted: yes

Amanda's error handling seems less robust than bacula's and, being written in perl rather than compiled, it is at the mercy of changes in the perl interpreter. The last point is not academic; on ubuntu 12.04 a recent perl upgrade which includes stricter syntax checking has broken amanda.

1 members found this post helpful.

Forgot G4U and dd.

Bacual may be a bit of a pain to set up - not really, you just really need to actually read the docs - but it excels at doing what it says it will do. Regarding the poor cousin consideration, this is why I never really got behind Amanda. Bacula is overkill for a home PC, but great for actual enterprise use.

Oh, yeah, it has a gui now? Ooh, la, la!!

Peace

Simple Backup. Simple Backup is proving to be excellent now. When I first installed the program it seemed quite fickle (with external drives) but still seemed to be superior to the other programs. Simple Backup worked as expected with your main drive but was unreliable with external networked drives. Whether the bugs were fixed or I learned how to adapt - I don't know, but it has been working very well now. I am backing up (three computers) to one external USB Hard Drive that is attached to a router.

Based on my experience, Simple Backup appears to be more reliable when the following factors are taken into account:

1. When the USB drive is mounted through FSTAB.
2. When the USB drive is formated for Linux. My router does not recognize EXT4, so I had to format it with EXT3. Other routers with USB ports may recognize EXT4.