Ubuntu - alternative to Acronis True Image

Question

I'm considering switching from Windows 7 to Ubuntu 13.04. On Windows, I'm using Acronis True Image 2012 for Backup, which has these three key features for me:

• Backup system partition and recover it via bootable CD (protects me from OS damage, I could be back and running with all my programs and settings in just one hour)
• Backup selected folders using differential/incremental backup (I back up every week and use 1 full backup + 7 chains. Chain backup usually takes just 10-15 mins and full backup every 2 months I could survive)
• Possibility to mount any backed-up version as read-only device, so I can naturally and transparently access and manipulate all my files in the backup.

AES 256 Encryption would be also fine, but this could be solved another way - to store an entire backup of the encrypted partition.

I have tried DejaDup which is preinstalled on Ubuntu, but I was not able to access backed up files another way than completely restore the backup, which is insufficient.

What do you recommend me?

Answer 1

For the /home folders (and any other user data folders), I suggest going with something simple like rsnapshot, rdiff-backup or rsync w/ hard-links. All of them store at least one (or all) backup revisions as regular files in the file system. All of them can work with remote targets over the network or local folders as the backup target. They're all command-line tools, which makes for easy scripting and execution via the cron command. Combine that with LVM snapshots and you can easily mount a read-only copy of the backup target file system, without worrying that you'll damage your backup directory.

Note: I strongly believe that all file systems should be inside of LVM logical volumes where possible. The only exceptions with GRUB 0.9x is /boot and / (root) because it doesn't know how to read those. But /home, /srv, /yourlocaldata, and other file systems can easily be placed into LVs.

For example, with rdiff-backup:

• The most recent version of any file is stored as a plain file in the target directory. So restoring or viewing the most recently backed up file is very easy.
• Previous versions of a file are stored as a compressed diff, which makes it very space-efficient.
• You can choose any backup retention period you want, depending on what time period you pass to "--remove-older-than" in a second run of rdiff-backup.
• rdiff-backup directories are very friendly for rsync over the WAN to a remote site. Or for rsync'ing to an external USB drive.

For bare-metal restore of system configuration -- I don't have a better recommendation then those linked. But as long as you make sure to put your own data on separate file systems, it gets a lot easier to tackle.

Answer 2

There is nice comparison of some commonly used backup utilities on community wiki. I'd recommend Bacula.

Answer 3

The first thing that came to mind - CloneZilla link