This Linux command is the only backup tool I’ll ever need

Source Domain: www.makeuseof.com

Experts recommend specialized backup suites, complex enterprise software, and cloud tools for data protection, and I’ve used my fair share of these. I’m done with all of them. Interestingly, what made me realize that none of these elaborate GUI backup tools are good enough for me is older than half of the engineers in Silicon Valley.

It’s a native command-line tool called rsync. rsync strips away graphical elements and relies on a raw, differential-matching pipeline, making it faster and more efficient. My entire data recovery strategy is built around it.

It copies only what matters

That’s when backups became practical

I typically try to avoid uncomfortable tasks, and to some extent, backups have become tedious over the years. I understood how important they were, but the thought of waiting every time I needed to run a backup kept me from doing them consistently. Rsync totally changed this.

My working folder, which contained several gigabytes of project files, backed up in minutes. Then, after I made some edits and added new files, I ran the backup again, and within a few seconds, it was done. Here was the command I ran:

rsync -avh –delete /home/user/projects/ /media/backup/projects/

The -avh options are an important part of this command. -a enables archive mode, preserving permissions, ownership, and timestamps. -v prints the files being transferred to the terminal, and -h…

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