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In his popular article Easy Automated Snapshot-Style Backups with Linux and Rsync, Mike Rubel asserts that using rsync to create hard-linked snapshots with --link-dest is "a better way" to perform incremental backups than using --backup-dir, but he does not explain this statement.

I'm hoping to using rsync to create daily backups of about 1-2 GB of personal data from my laptop's $HOME directory. I would like a mirror of the current state of my files, plus some way to recover older versions of files (so I guess I want incremental backups).

What did Mike Rubel mean when he called his solution better than --backup-dir? What are the advantages/disadvantages of each solution? Which might be better for my situation?

Edit: I should clarify that the total size of the full backup would be 1-2 GB. Likely there will only be a few MB (or less) of new data each day. And I plan to back up to a local storage drive.

jth
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  • I believe --link-dest is the go-to command for taking incremental backups because you only take a full backup once, and after that you only backup files that have changed. With --backup-dir I believe you do a full backup each time. – Bungicasse Oct 29 '19 at 11:13
  • Even when used with `-b` (`--backup`)? The article states that using `-b --backup-dir=` is the most common way (at the time the article was written) to perform incremental backups. – jth Oct 29 '19 at 17:38
  • @Bungicasse sorry, forgot to tag you – jth Oct 30 '19 at 23:31

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