Replicating data/making backups using rsync
So I admit, I am late to the party here. As my home/office infrastructure has grown, it has become necessary to easily replicate media between laptops, and to reliably make backups of content and data. After some evaluation, the tool that I think is going to best meet my needs is… rsync. Yes, that rsync.
There are a number of helpful guides out there, but I opted for this one. It is not the most detailed, but it’s a pretty straightforward guide to getting going with rsync.
tl;dr:
rsync -aze ssh /my/media/dir/
remote_user@remotehost.com:/backup/media/dir/
The key is to make sure you always use SSH in conjunction with rsync. Not only does this give you the confidence of transmitting your data securely, but it also adds the convenience of allowing you to use SSH keys in lieu of passwords, making this extremely easy to automate.