Incremental backups
Incremental backups create a complete snapshot of your source files in a dated folder on the destination. This is similar to time machine so you can go back to retrieve files from a certain date. Each backup only takes up the space of the actual changed files while the other files are copied as hard links to the originals (which take up very little space.)
This means that the destination files appear exactly as the source files did at the time of backup. You select the number of incremental backups and backupList+ will prune the earliest backup when it reaches that number - thus maintaining the desired amount of snapshots at all times.
Incremental Backup settings
- Rsync delete option. This causes rsync to delete and files on the destination that are not on the source. Warning! This is a destructive action and will cause loss of any data in the destination directory that is not present in the source directory. You must know what you are doing with this choice or risk data loss.
- Recreate full folder paths. This will create folders on the backup that re-create the folder paths on your hard drive. For example if you are copying your Mail folder it will be copied into a sequence of folders that mimic its position on your hard drive, > Mail > Preferences > Library > Home folder .
Backing up to a sparse disk image
You can have backupList+ create a sparse disk image, mount the image and then copy the source files into it. You can do this with regular, incremental or clone type backups.
Sparse disk image: Sparse images grow in size to the maximum you enter in the text field. With this option backuplist+ will create the sparseimage, mount it and copy the source files into it. The next time you run this backup set, backuplist+ will mount the image and update the source files with any new changes.You must enter a size for the initial disk image. This should be the maximum size you think the sparse image will need. It will however only occupy the disk space of its contained files which is very nice.