Snapshots

With the option -M, raspiBackup offers the possibility to create a kind of snapshot. These are normal backups, but they have two special features:

• Snapshots are not automatically deleted by the selected backup strategy
• Snapshots must be given a description as a parameter to the -M option. This is appended to the end of the directory name and allows to give the snapshot directories meaningful names to remember their purpose.

This makes it very easy to create a snapshot out of sequence and the reason for the snapshot can be recognized by the description. This is very helpful, for example, before carrying out a software update or planning another major change. If the update goes wrong, you can quickly restore the previous status. If it was successful, the snapshot must be deleted manually from the backup directory.

Note: raspiBackup snapshots are not snapshots in the true sense of the word as they can be created with btrfs, for example. They are normal dd, tar or rsync backups. rsync backups are delta backups and are therefore complete more quickly than dd or tar backups.

There is a Youtube video, in which the raspiBackup snapshots are explained and a demo is given.