cdbackup not efficient!

ganninu · 01-18-2007, 07:44 AM

I am trying to daily backup a few MB of data. I am noticing that cdbackup is very inefficient - if i backup say 10MB, it utilizes around 30MB of the CD:

$tar -cvf - /testbackup2/ | cdbackup -d /dev/hdb -r /dev/hdb -a "Test backup"

List contents of CD:
$cdrestore -d /dev/hdb -q
Tracks: 1
Disk size: 650 MB ( 333000 blocks)
Space used: 22 MB ( 11702 blocks)
Space avail: 627 MB ( 321298 blocks)

Track 01: 600 kB: 01/12/2007 14:03 Part 1 C : Test backup

Can someone tell me why is this, or propose a better solution?

thanks

trickykid · 01-18-2007, 09:21 AM

CD's are not really designed to be a means of daily backups. You're better off getting an external disk or possibly a small tape drive to handle such small amounts of daily backups. Or if you have another machine, have them backup to one another for your daily backup needs using something like rsync.

michaelk · 01-18-2007, 12:24 PM

There is some extra filesystem overhead require for multisession CDs which I assume is how cdbackup is configured. Not exactly sure on the details but a new Table of Contents (TOC) is required for each session. Like trickykid stated using CDs in this manner is not going to be efficient.