Using Rsync to backup a Windows Share

Question

I have a Windows 7 box that I want to back up to an Ubuntu machine.

I have mounted a Windows share on the Ubuntu box (using CIFS/Samba), and I want to use a cron job to rsync what's on the mounted share to another directory on the Ubuntu box.

1) What would be the recommended rsync settings to copy the folders and files on the Windows share onto the Ubuntu box - bearing in mind that these files may have to be restored back to the Windows machine in the future.

rsync -av /mnt/winshare /home/user/winbackup

2) Are there any pitfalls/things to watch out for, with backing up files from Windows 7 on Ubuntu?

Answer 1

May I suggest that you look into BURP for backing up Windows using Linux?

Answer 2

I have seen customers of mine trying to use similar method for backing up Windows systems and they usually failed (in one case, really badly) because of four issues:

• This doesn't work well on open files which can result in the backup being (partially) unusable.
• Linux file system is case sensitive while Windows's isn't. With time, this tends to cause duplicates and, more difficult to handle, directory structure changes. This makes it very hard to reliably restore a backup.
• It doesn't work on windows symbolic links and hard links. It's usually not a problem if you're only using if for data folders but it will cause any OS backup to be unusable.
• NTFS permissions are not properly replicated.

The last two issues might not be actual problem for you depending on the nature what you want to backup. The first two, however, are likely to cause your backups to be randomly inconsistent and hard to restore.

Answer 3

I suggest you to check:

• Backula
• BackupPC

Great Free Software and professional results :)

If you want to keep this even easier you can install Crashplan on Windows PC and use the samba share to store the backup.

Answer 4

Rsync is a very powerful tool, perfectly capable of doing what you are asking. Simply use the following options: -aAX --numeric-ids, where:

• -a means "archive", and it implies several other options;
• -A means "Access Lists", and it is needed to backup the NTFS security descriptors;
• -X means "Extended Attributes", and it copy any additional meta-stream attached to the file;
• --numeric-ids means to not mangle the UID/GID attached to the files. NOTE: if you Windows and Linux machines have persistent UID/GID (eg: by being joined to a AD/LDAP domain), you can safely skip this option.

I suggest you to directly install CygWin/Rsync on the Windows machine, bypassing the Linux mount entirely. Moreover, please consider using rsync via rsnapshot: it is a very good utility with incremental backup feature.