Re: backing up hard drive with emacs?

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Steven Arntson <steven@stevenarntson.com> writes:

> Sorry if this question is poorly stated... I'm a beginning emacs user
> who's trying to be more responsible about backing up the hard drive of my
> computer. A friend gave me a USB drive with the same amount of space as
> my laptop's hard drive, and I'd like to figure out how to back up the
> data.
>
> I've read some info online, and am primarily confused by it. I'd like a
> simple way to make a copy of my home folder on this drive. I don't need
> compressed archives or anything--this is just in case a boulder falls on
> my laptop--but it would be nice if it had the ability to see what I'd
> changed since last time and just recopy that, rather than doing it all
> from scratch. (Is it called "cloning" the drive?)
>
> Does emacs have any simple utility to do this kind of thing, or
> (slightly offtopic) is there a cli command that would make it happen?
>
> Lastly, should I be thinking about this whole issue differently than I
> am?
>
> Thank you!
> steven arntson

Emacs itself probably isn't the right tool for this job: you could use
it to invoke other commands, but by itself it doesn't do this sort of
thing.

There are a million different solutions for backing things up, but I
think one of the simplest and most effective is rsync, which is likely
already on your machine (provided it's not windows). If you google
"rsync for backups" you'll get more information than you ever wanted.

Eric