Overview

If you've ever suffered a hard drive crash, you know just how aggravating it can be. Irreplaceable data can be lost. Countless hours may be spent reinstalling your operating system and applications. It is not a fun experience. It need happen only once for you to learn the importance of making regular backups of your critical data.

Today, larger and faster backup media can simplify the process of backing up your data. Red Hat Linux supports many different types of media — such as writable CD-ROM, DVD, and magnetic tape — for creating backups. Using tools such as cron, you can configure backups to run unattended at scheduled times.

This chapter describes how to create a backup strategy and how to select media for backing up data on your Red Hat Linux system. It tells you how to do automated backups and backups over a network. It also describes how to restore individual files, or entire file systems, using tools such as the restore command.