Back It Up.

Blogger has changed its user interface slightly again. I am also back to using the "Blogger in Draft" dashboard. Yay.

I'm mostly writing this to document the copy command I use to merge directories these days:

cp -av --backup=numbered foo/* foo2/

I'm terrified of dataloss. That's why I use --backup=numbered. I usually merge too many files to make -i interactivity viable. -v verbosity helps me find out what things were backed up (would have conflicted), and -a preserves permissions and timestamps.

Actually, I think I should further investigate rsync. I want something that won't create backups if the files are truly the same (by checksum, or is time+size enough?) but does create unique backups elsewise. Actually, it sounds like this will do the trick

rsync -abz --progress

Right now, I'm orchestrating back-ups for my girlfriend and me. I have a 500GB external HD and she has a 250GB HD. I'm currently packing up the 500GB's contents onto her HD and then will be backuping up her HD and my own to the 500GB external HD. Going through an old backup, I realised that I had lost some files along the way, perhaps just through gross negligence. I'm not sure. I hope to one day retrieve my girlfriend's files locked away on her dead HD from a few months ago. Sigh.