Re: [rdiff-backup-users] external hard drive for backups with multiple file systems

[Dominic Raferd]

On 12/01/11 00:55, Thomas Evangelidis wrote:
> I have an external hard drive where I would like to save my Windows 
> files and also create incremental backups for Linux. The problem is 
> that incremental backups cannot be created in the default HPFS/NTFS 
> file system of the hard drive. Is it possible to format the drive to a 
> file system (i.e. VFAT or FAT32) which would be read by Windows but 
> could also save Linux incremental backups? Which file system is that? 
> The program I use for backing up is rdiff-backup.
I don't know of any reason why rdiff-backup under Linux could not back 
up to FAT32, but I have never tried it and personally I would stick to a 
standard Linux format such as ext4.
> If there isn't any such file system, in what way could I create 2 
> partitions just for backing up (no OS will be installed), one of which 
> will be mounted by Windows (i.e. NTFS) and the other by Linux (i.e. 
> ext4) using a partitioning program like GParted?
No problem to do this, but make the first partition on the drive NTFS, 
because this is the only one that will be seen by Windows, and then the 
second can be for Linux. You can probably even create the first 
partition under Windows.
> I would greatly appreciate any advice!
If both machines (Windows and Linux) are in the same place and switched 
on at the same time, then you could leave the external drive attached to 
the Linux machine (and formatted for Linux), and run rdiff-backup from 
the Windows machine to the Linux machine, saving the data on the 
external drive. Using rdiff-backup from Windows to Linux is well tested.

Dominic
http://www.timedicer.co.uk