My removable drive backup solution

I wanted to offer up my solution to create a rotating removable drive backup solution, maybe help someone else who wants to do something similar.

On my OMV server there are certain shared folders along with non shared folders that I wanted to keep backed up using a removable media. The usb-backup plugin was an option but I wanted something faster such as a removable hard drive.

Looked into the rsync jobs, but wanted something custom with notifications to swap drives after a period of time. So I have been using the method below:

- Installed a StarTech.com Black Aluminum 5.25in Rugged SATA Hard Drive Mobile Rack Drawer with an additional StarTech.com Extra Black Hard Drive Caddy for DRW150SATBK
- Had two spare 1TB hard drives from a previous setup to use as the backup drives

- Formatted the drives and used e2label and labeled the drives RemovableDrive_A and RemovableDrive_B respectively
- Created the following files on my server in folder /home/scripts/rmvbackup

• chkdriveage.sh
• extbackup.sh
• extbackup.txt
• rmvbackupjob.sh

- Added 2 scheduled jobs one for chkdriveage.sh (run at 2pm every day), rmvbackupjob.sh (run at 2:15am every day)

HERE is a .zip link of the scripts, I also attached it to the bottom of this post

There are 2 package dependencies used in the scripts, bc (for the floating point math) & mutt (my preferred email client, use it in other scripts of mine)

apt-get install bc
apt-get install mutt

Cliff notes version of the job process:

rmvbackupjob.sh is a wrapper for extbackup.sh to capture the output and send email log when complete

• extbackup.sh looks for a attached device with drive label RemovableDrive_* and mounts the drive
• Folders defined in the extbackup.sh script are synced the the mounted drive
• Time and use counter are updated in the extbackup.txt file
• Drive is unmounted and a joblog email is sent to the specified email in rmvbackjob.sh

Example email from script:

Backup start date/time .......: Wed 12/23/2015 at 02:15:01
Drive caddy loaded ...........: RemovableDrive_B 


Data folders being backed-up .: Documents HomeMovies Music OMVBackups Photos SystemTools 
OS folders being backed-up ...: /home/scripts 


                       rsync summary statistics
----------------------------------------------------------------------


Number of files: 92961
Number of files transferred: 2
Total file size: 358.23G bytes
Total transferred file size: 68 bytes
Literal data: 68 bytes
Matched data: 0 bytes
File list size: 2.14M
File list generation time: 0.001 seconds
File list transfer time: 0.000 seconds
Total bytes sent: 2.15M
Total bytes received: 11.05K


sent 2.15M bytes  received 11.05K bytes  333.03K bytes/sec
total size is 358.23G  speedup is 165489.43


----------------------------------------------------------------------


Backup end date/time .........: Wed 12/23/2015 at 02:15:09

chkdriveage.sh

• extbackup.txt file is read and the # of days specified in the script is compared to the first seen date
• Email is sent to the specified email in the script if the removable drive should be swapped

Example email from script:

Drive RemovableDrive_A has been used for 7 days, please switch to another drive caddy!


Drive caddy label .: RemovableDrive_A
First Seen ........: Mon 12/14/2015 at 02:32:22
# of times used ...: 8
# of days elapsed..: 7

** Required script changes **

chkdriveage.sh

• Change warndays to the # of days before change drive warning is emailed
• Change xxxx@gmail.com to your notification email

extbackup.sh

• Change sourcepath to your data drive path, mine is current value
• Change backupitems to each data drive folder to backup
• Change osbackupitems to each OS drive folder to backup

rmvbackupjob.sh

• Change xxxx@gmail.com to your notification email

This setup is custom for what I wanted to accomplish, this way I always have a rotating backup I store in a fire safe that at the most is a week old.