How does Back in Time back up work?

Ask Fedora
1

Hi

Does Back in Time work by creating a master back up initially and then any later back ups are compared to the original and would only save file changes?

If so, would deleting an old back up cause problems when restoring a newer back up?

Thanks

2

I believe it uses hard links to manage it’s snapshots so removing old snapshots should be fine.

Otherwise, you would have to keep every snapshot forever.

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3

Thanks!

I heard about symbolic links but not about hard links.

I’ve looked up on hard links (here, if anyone is interested) and understand that hard links save space by pointing to the same part of the hard drive for that original file. Deleting an old backup entry in BiT doesn’t delete the backup file if it’s linked to other back up entries with that hard link.

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