Backups using Espionage built-in functionality

Started by mdevane, July 24, 2010, 01:43:38 PM

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mdevane

Have been testing use of Espionage and think it has great potential.  Few questions:

Q1: I would like to make sure I fully understand the backup implications, so I set up the following test:

1. created an encrypted Test folder.  Set backups to occur on lock folder action.
2. added 6 image files to unencrypted Test folder
3. locked Test folder
4. folder the backed up automatically (as expected)
5. opened backed-up sparsebundle and found all 6 image files (as expected)
6. unmounted sparsebundle backup
7. re-opened Test folder and deleted one of the image files.
8. locked Test folder, observed successful backup, and re-opened sparsebundle backup.
9. found only 5 images in backup now.

Is this expected behavior for rsync?  I was under the impression that you are performing backups using rsync, not true synchronization, but this test would indicate that all changes in Test folder are being mirrored in the sparsebundle backup file -- if so, can rsync behavior be modified to perform true "backups" (differential or incremental) rather than mirrored "syncs"?

Q2: I use MS LiveSync to sync folders on my travel mbp to my home mac.  This works like a champ for unencrypted folders, but based on reading, similar to DropBox coexistance, it appears I should sync the sparsebundle backups, rather than the encrypted folder itself.  If so, then I assume I would need to "restore" the synched sparsebundle backup before using on the other computer.  Do I understand correctly?  Is there an easier, less cumbersome, method that I have missed?

Regards, Mark

greg

#1
Quote from: "mdevane"Is this expected behavior for rsync?  I was under the impression that you are performing backups using rsync, not true synchronization, but this test would indicate that all changes in Test folder are being mirrored in the sparsebundle backup file -- if so, can rsync behavior be modified to perform true "backups" (differential or incremental) rather than mirrored "syncs"?

This is the expected behavior for rsync. One possible alternative (with normal rsync) is to have it only copy files, and never delete files on the backup, thus creating an "accumulated backup" (perhaps what you mean by 'incremental'?). However, this cannot be done with encrypted sparsebundles because rsync is backing up "encrypted data", and it cannot know what represents a file and what doesn't. It just sees blobs of encrypted "stuff", so all it can do is mirror.

You can combine Espionage's backups with Time Machine by having Time Machine backup Espionage's backups to give Espionage's backups a history. You can also simply use Time Machine in addition to Espionage's backups.

QuoteQ2: I use MS LiveSync to sync folders on my travel mbp to my home mac.  This works like a champ for unencrypted folders, but based on reading, similar to DropBox coexistance, it appears I should sync the sparsebundle backups, rather than the encrypted folder itself.  If so, then I assume I would need to "restore" the synched sparsebundle backup before using on the other computer.  Do I understand correctly?  Is there an easier, less cumbersome, method that I have missed?

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