Messing Around with Backing Up a USB Stick (Linux)

I use my USB sticks for a variety of things, most notably a temporary backup of important files from various PCs.  One day I had a spectacular USB stick failure and lost my backups.  Ever since then I thought it was a good idea to back up the backups.

There are a number of ways to do this.  In Linux, it’s always interesting because no matter how simple or well-explained, it never works for me.  This isn’t necessarily a reflection on Linux; moreso a reflection of what happens when I get near a computer.

This comes as a distinct disadvantage when one works in MIS, as I do.

My first step on the discovery path is, of course, Google.  When one searches on `backing up USB drive’, one gets all sorts of interesting results, generally about backing up to a USB stick (and p*rn).

One suggestion dealt with discovering the specific ID of the USB stick.  I tried and it failed, as usual.  Again, part of it reflects on me but some part of it also involves Linux.  Sometimes the documentation is, shall we say, lacking.  Or it assumes you know what you’re doing (which I don’t).  Of course I’m not speaking of all Linux documentation or programs.

I remember using rsync a month or so ago to sync two directories on two machines.  It was fast and accurate, as advertised.  I thought I had documented it in my personal help file but apparently not.  Or I documented it on a different computer but I lost my memory in a childhood accident and can’t remember which.

The next listing was http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/1088468.html

BINGO.

This detailed the author’s process of backing up and discovering how the whole thing worked.  It would be silly to reproduce it here - I recommend visiting the page if you’re at all curious.

I messed with this person’s script and came up with the following.  Hopefully it will be of some use to you.  It appears to be pretty basic rsync.  I cut out the sections dealing with UDEV and RULES.  Copy these two lines to an empty document in a text editor (I use mousepad - you can use whatever floats your boat.  It’s better to avoid real word processors unless you know it saves in text format).  I saved this as usb_backup.

rsync -ar –log-file=/home/leftystrat/Desktop/$(date +%Y%m%d)_rsync.log /media/KINGSTON /home/leftystrat/Documents/usb_backup

/usr/bin/notify-send -t 0 “Backup Message”  “BACKUP’S DONE, Stupid!”

For your benefit (and mine), let’s dissect this.  The red text indicates something you need to modify to make this work for you:

rsync -ar : start backing up, archive+verbose options

–log-file=/home/leftystrat/Desktop/$(date +%Y%m%d)_rsync.log :  creates a logfile with the date in the title and puts it on your desktop.  I left it at Desktop so I could verify that it was working.  I’ll edit this to send to the destination directory from now on.

/media/KINGSTON /home/leftystrat/Documents/usb_backup :  your source and destination directories - (these must be on the same line as the command).  For source I used the (auto)mounted name of the stick and for destination, a directory I created just for this purpose.  Don’t forget to change the relevant lines or else you’ll wind up with some interesting results (if it works at all).

/usr/bin/notify-send -t 0 “Backup Message”  “BACKUP’S DONE, Stupid!” :  this sends a popup to your desktop with the text in quotes.  This will obviously work for you, but you might want to change the text.  -t 0 makes the text expire immediately.

After you do this, there’s one more step:

chmod +x  usb_backup (or whatever name you gave it).  This makes the script executable.  It will work from the directory it’s in like this: [prompt]./usb_backup     If you want, you can sudo mv usb_backup /usr/bin/ (copies the script to a directory that will make it executable from anywhere).

That’s it.  It works!  (I’m always excited when something works because it usually doesn’t).  It’s even more exciting because I found the original script and modified it.  You too can do this.  Congrats - you’re a programmer now :)

[DISCLAIMER:  I am not a programmer.  I mess with stuff and occasionally it works.  I just wanted to pass on what worked for me in hopes of helping and educating others - sometimes in the wrong way of doing things.]