For full backups with incremental space usage, try the following script. It will create backup directories with the current date, and unchanged files will be hardlinked to the old version. Caution: The last line (the rsync command) may be linewrapped by my mailer. #!/bin/bash # incremental full backups with rsync # (c) Carl-Daniel Hailfinger accessmode="-e ssh" remotehost="p35:" remotepath="/home/carldani" # for local backups, change accessmode and remotehost to empty strings unset LS_OPTIONS rsync -av --delete --link-dest=/backups/`ls /backups/|sort|tail -1` $accessmode $remotehost$remotepath /backups/`date +%F` This script has been in use for my personal backups for the last 3 years (maybe more). Since my $HOME is approx. 1 GB with 250 MB changing files (mail etc.), I can burn a group of 14 backups to one DVD without any special tools (as long as you don't use k3b, it will barf or corrupt your backups) and even have them appear as full backups on CD with incremental space usage. The most important point of this backup strategy is that you can rm -rf older backups including the first one and still have all files available. Regards, Carl-Daniel -- http://www.hailfinger.org/