Okay.... I am doing it your way but I have  a problem:
$ mke2fs -j -L MY_BACKUPS /dev/sdc
mke2fs 1.42.5 (29-Jul-2012)
/dev/sdc is entire device, not just one partition!
Proceed anyway? (y,n) y
/dev/sdc is mounted; will not make a filesystem here!
bmike1@PresarioLapTop1:/home$ sudo umount /dev/sdc
bmike1@PresarioLapTop1:/home$ mke2fs -j -L MY_BACKUPS /dev/sdc
mke2fs 1.42.5 (29-Jul-2012)
/dev/sdc is entire device, not just one partition!
Proceed anyway? (y,n) y
mke2fs: Permission denied while trying to determine filesystem size
bmike1@PresarioLapTop1:/home$

so what is  wrong?
:-)~MIKE~(-:


On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 8:45 AM, Matt Graham <danceswithcrows@usa.net> wrote:

> From: Michael Havens
> > Okay Matt (or anyone else who wants to answer this), could I do this:
> > first I make a directory in the usb [disk] called 'bmike1-backup'
> >
> > #!/bin/bash
> > sudo mkdir /backups
> > sudo mount /sdc1/backup-bmike1 /backups
> > rsync -av /home/bmike1
> > sudo umount backups; sudo rmdir backups <-make everything like it was
>
> Why all the sudo invocations?  The procedure I gave earlier only requires 2
> things to be done as root:  Make a mountpoint for the device, then add an
> fstab entry for that device.  Do those things and then you can back up
> your ~
> as a normal user, no root anything required.
>
> Also, your mount syntax in that script is incorrect unless your distro is
> doing something very odd.  And USB devices are not guaranteed to have the
> same
> device names; the USB disk at /dev/sdc1 may be /dev/sdd1 or /dev/sdb1
> depending on how many other USB storage devices are plugged in.  That's
> why I
> said you should make a filesystem with a label on it.  Do that on your USB
> disk.  If it already has a filesystem on it, you can do "tune2fs -L
> A_NEW_LABEL /dev/whatever" to change the filesystem label without zorching
> the
> filesystem.
>
> Once you've done these things, the script would look like this:
>
> #!/bin/bash
> mount /mnt/backup
> if mount | grep /mnt/backup > /dev/null ; then
>     rsync -av --delete-after /home/bmike1/ /mnt/backup/bmike1
>     umount /mnt/backup
> else
>     echo "backup disk not mounted; can't back up"
> fi
>
>
> --
> Matt G / Dances With Crows
> The Crow202 Blog:  http://crow202.org/wordpress/
> There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
>
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