Time Vault is an open source free backup utility for Linux. Time Vault creates incremental backups of files that can be restored at a later date. Snapshots are copies of a directory at a certain time. Snapshots use very little space for the files that haven’t changed since the last snapshot was made. This is because instead of backing up the entire unchanged file, snapshots use hard links that point to the existing backup of the unchanged file. This is also known as delta changes where it will only backup what files have been modified since the last snapshot. Time Vault has a nice easy to use GUI.

Snapshots are protected from accidental deletion or modification since they are read-only by default.

After installing the .deb file, there are two steps required to complete installation:

You must configure TimeVault, the backend will start automatically but the notifier needs to be started. To get the notifier app to start in your systray whenever you log in, you can add it to your startup programs in System>Preferences>Sessions in the tab Startup Programs you should have an option to add a program click that, name it TimeVault and put:

‘/usr/bin/timevault-notifier’

In the command box, you can put whatever you like in the comments box. After you have done this, if you log out and back in again you should magically have the TimeVault notifier app sitting in your systray. Right click on it and go to preferences to configure TimeVault as you wish.

Configuration

When you start the TimeVault Notifier for the first time, the tray icon will be grayed out and if you hover over the icon, it will say that it is unconfigured. Listed below are the steps needed to configure TimeVault:

There are three tabs: General, Include and Exclude.

General:

  • Enable Automated Snapshots: By default, TimeVault will not automatically take snapshots of your system. Checking this box will tell it to automatically take daily snapshots.
  • Show snapshot notifications: This switch toggles on and off whether snapshot notifications are to be shown or not.
  • Snapshot Root Directory: Where to store the snapshots. Ideally, you should pick a directory that is mounted onto another physical drive from the data you are backing up. This is so that, in the case of a hard-disk failure, the backups will remain intact (unless the drive containing the backups fails, in which case the current version of the data remains).
  • Make sure you change the settings under Advance to include your largest file, currently it is only set for 32mb. This is not large enough if you have videos as part of a back up.
  • You may consider to back up to a network drive, in the case of total hard drive failure your data will be safe.

Include:

  • Backup paths are listed here. Every directory that you want snapshot should be added to this list.

Exclude:

  • Paths or patterns to exclude from the snapshots should be listed here.
  • When you have finished making the necessary changes press the save button and TimeVault should pop up a message saying.
  • You have included new directories in the TimeVault. File signatures will now be computed.
  • Click ok in this box and TimeVault should be active and will start watching your files.

Latest version: timevault_0.7.5-1_i386.deb (md5)