Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Verify times increasing

[Daniel Miller]

Gavin wrote:
> Daniel Miller wrote:
> > Why is the time needed to verify a three-month-old backup not  
> > leveling
> > off? And is there a way to bring down my verification times but still
> > be sure that my backup archives are not becoming corrupt due to
> > decaying storage media, etc? Is there some other method of
> > verification that I could use, perhaps not even related to rdiff- 
> > backup?
> >
> > ~ Daniel
> I do seem to remember a discussion on list using base tools to  
> verify data.
> First you could check that everything that is compressed is passing  
> that
> tools checks, should be pretty quick.

I found a utility called yafic (http://www.saddi.com/software/yafic/)  
which allows me to verify the entire backup drive. It's pretty fast,  
and for my situation it provides a better solution than rdiff-backup  
because it allows me to verify arbitrary files of my choosing rather  
than just those that rdiff-backup is managing. Note that it would  
still be more convenient to have a faster and more robust verify  
mechanism built into rdiff-backup.

> <snip>
>
> Another thought is http://code.google.com/p/archfs/
> if you can at least browse the files there is a good chance that the
> backup is mostly intact.
>
> Also consider using rdiff-backup via a tool like backupninja and split
> the backup into more manageable sized parts or run multiple scripts to
> backup smaller parts.

Thanks for your suggestions Gavin. I'll continue to look into ways to  
simplify my backup, which just got another layer of complexity and  
potential for failure with yafic... :)

~ Daniel