The best way - depends on what you need.
Here is what I do -
Each night, I have a cron job that mounts an external drive and I copy files. Here is a snippet:
#!/bin/bash
### backup to usb drive ###
# Ensure the device is plugged in
if [ ! -b /dev/USB-500GB-EXT ]; then
exit 1
fi
# Mount the backup mount point
mount /backup
echo "*******************************">>/backup/backup.log
echo "Start Backup">>/backup/backup.log
date>>/backup/backup.log
echo "/home/klee/ - processing ...">>/backup/backup.log
# Copy data from /home/klee
cd /backup
mkdir /backup/home
mkdir /backup/home/klee
cd /backup/home/klee
cp -a -u -v --reply=yes /home/klee/ /backup/home/
date>>/backup/backup.log
echo "Backup Complete">>/backup/backup.log
cd /root
# unmount the backup mount point
umount -l /backup
###############################################
From work, I use rsync. With a windows laptop, I would use rsync and ssh with cygwin. Here's a sample of that script:
@echo off
setlocal
set PATH=c:\cygwin;%PATH%
set CYGWIN=binmode tty
set TERM=ansi
set USERNAME=klee
set HOME=c:\cygwin
set RSYNC_RSH=ssh.exe
@echo on
c:
cd "\My Documents"
rsync -e c:\cygwin\ssh -va ./ username@ipaddress:/home/klee/mydocuments/
endlocal
Hope that gives you some ideas. For this to work, I have a dedicated server at home and spend an extra 5 dollars a month for a static IP address. This way I can SSH to my Home PC anytime I need from just about anywhere I have an internet connection. This has really helped when I needed to get a hint from sourcecode I had at home. Just a quick SSH terminal session, and I had what I needed.
Ken
