Mount point for backup drive
 

Hi All,

I'm just setting up a partition on a seperate HDD in my system. I plan to use the partition to backup the important files on my main HDD (to guard against HD crash).

The question I have is about where would be the typical location to auto mount this partition? Which would it be normal to go for:

1. /backup/
2. /media/backup/
3. /mnt/backup/
4. /home/chris/backup/

Any issues with choosing each one? Does it matter? Since it's backing up my personal files, maybe option 4 makes sense?

Thanks,

Chris

It is totally up to you how to name the mountpoint. None of your options makes more or less sense than the others.

Ok, great thanks. I just wondered whether there was any common practice for locating things like this, or its just personal preference.

I think I'll go with option 4.

If you want to follow the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy standard then somewhere under /mnt is appropriate for temporary mounts and somewhere under /media is appropriate for removable media (a USB HDD might count as removable media; an internal HDD would not).

A separate HDD would guard against primary HDD failure alone; it would not guard against events damaging the entire computer (such as fire); for this reason external media is a more robust choice and off-site storage even better.

EDIT: the directory hierarchy under each /home/* directory is for files specific to the associated user.

Personally I would not use the user's home directory. What happens when you backup the user's home directory? In that case you will also backup the mounted backup drive.

My choice would be either 3 or 1.

If your intention is to have the backup filesystem permanently mounted, then I'd be inclined to avoid both /media and /mnt.

/mnt is intended to be used for temporary mounts done by the system administrator, so for example
mount /dev/backupdrive /mnt/backup
do_backuip
unmount /mnt/backup
would be an appropriate use of /mnt

/media is where the desktop environments will automatically mount removable media via udev + udsks/hal. Label a disk as "backup" and it will be mounted on /media/backup
For this reason I prefer to aviod using /media directly and leave it for udev/hal.

For permanent mounts, what I do is I have all my local filesystems mounted on subdirectories under /local.
/local/mirrors
/local/music
/local/backup

... and so on, but it's really up to you to decide how you like to organise it. It doesn't really matter what scheme you come up with, but if you do think out a scheme and stick to it, it'll make your system much tidier and easier to manage in the long run.

Just be aware of, and respect the intended use of /mnt and /media and you should be fine.

Ah Ok, yes, I did think about the issue you mentioned when I was setting it up Wim. Your scheme using /local/ sounds good though GazL, so I'll change to /local/backup/ .

Edit: When you put them in /local/, who do you set as the owner and group?

Thanks all,

Chris

I'd be inclined to make /local root:root 755 and set any subdirectories as is appropriate to their use, but there are all manner of ways of doing the permissions.