Here’s how to do quick backups in Linux Mint / Ubuntu using Grsync:
1. Issue the following command at the terminal –
sudo apt-get install grsync
2. After the installation is complete, click on ‘Applications>System Tools>Grsync’ to start the application.
3. Now select the source directory to be backed up and the destination directory to backup to. For example, we have selected our home directory ‘/home/ihaveapc’ to be backed up to directory ‘/backups’ (Practically, you should backup to an external HDD for redundancy). Now, click the gear icon to run the backup job.
4. The backup job will start. Click on ‘Rsync output:’ to view details of the files being backed up.
5. Click close once the backup is complete.
6. The advantage with using Grsync for backup is that it will remember your source and destination directories when you launch the application again. The next time the backup job is run, it will sync the destination directory to the source directory i.e. only the newly created and modified files since the last backup job will be transferred, making the backup jobs quick. For e.g. in the screenshot below, only a newly created file ‘grsync_006.png’ was transferred when the next backup job was run as it was the only newly created file since the last backup.
