I am in need of two \"separate\" files that I can save independently of each other written from beginning to end. A crontab and an associated bash file that will delete all user\'s trash every night at 10 p.m. I need to be able to attach both files to an email. Solution Using rsync to make a backup ->Basics ->Using the --delete flag ->Be lazy: use cron Incremental backups with rsync ->Review of hard links ->Using cp -al ->Putting it all together Isolating the backup from the rest of the system ->The easy (bad) way ->Keep it on a separate partition ->Keep that partition on a separate disk ->Keep that disk on a separate machine Making the backup as read-only as possible ->Bad: mount/unmount ->Better: mount read-only most of the time ->Tempting but it doesn\'t seem to work: the 2.4 kernel\'s mount --bind ->My solution: using NFS on localhost Extensions: hourly, daily, and weekly snapshots ->Keep an extra script for each level ->Run it all with cron Known bugs and problems ->Maintaining Permissions and Owners in the snapshots ->mv updates timestamp bug ->Windows-related problems.