Set Up Incremental Backups With Rsync And Cron On Linux
Tecmint, Monday, June 23rd, 2025
Backups are like insurance; you don't need them every day, but when disaster strikes, such as accidental file deletion, a disk failure, or a ransomware attack, it's enough to ruin everything if you're not prepared. That's where smart backup planning comes in.
In this guide, I'll show you how to schedule incremental backups using rsync and cron. I'll explain what incremental backups are, how rsync works under the hood, and how to automate the whole process with cron.
What Is an Incremental Backup?
An incremental backup means you're only backing up the files that have changed since the last backup. So instead of copying everything every time, which can be slow and take up a lot of space, you're only saving the new or updated files.