Filesystem format for external hard disk

[Jeff Gipson]

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 12:15:58PM +0100, Paul Smith wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> I have got a new external hard disk, which I would like to use as a
> mirror of my home directory (for backup purpose). What format for the
> external disk filesystem do you recommend? And what the proper command
> to accomplish the formatting?
> 

	### End of Message from Paul Smith ###

For best advice, more information would be helpful... For example,
what's your retention policy?  If you only need a single backup, and not
historical backups *and* you are using LVM, you might consider just
storing LVM snaphots on the backup drive. If you want a more flexible
solution, you might try using rsync. Tar and dump are also still used.

As far as your specific question, you need the name of the device, and I
recommend creating a UDEV rule so that every time you plug in the
external hard drivei, the partition you backup to gets the SAME link in
/dev. This can save you from accidentally backing up to a thumbdrive
that was also in the USB port, or maybe a different hard drive. Let's
assume you've done this and the device symlink is /dev/backup, and let's
assume that you have inserted the drive. I recommend ext3 or ext4 as
they are widely used in Fedora:

 # /sbin/mkfs.ext4 /dev/backup

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  Jeffrey A. Gipson
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