mirroring linux server to external usb harddrive

Posted by DuPie on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by DuPie
Published on 2011-02-02T19:54:00Z Indexed on 2011/02/02 23:27 UTC
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Filed under:

linux

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backup

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ext3

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image

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mirroring

My google-fu must be sucking. i havent been able to find a good solution for the following:

numerous Linux server on commodity hardware
Trying to do a recovery mirror copy to external harddrives
External harddrives are smaller than source harddrives, but larger than data
External drives are connected via usb2 (slow)
Servers range from 20GB of data to 400GB of data
Servers are remote, so hands on access is a pain
need to copy boot files.
empty external drives currently

Basicly, looking for a way to do use a ghosting solution from INSIDE a running linux server to an external harddrive, without booting a cd etc. the rsync/cpio solutions i've looked at dont work great with grub/dev/proc etc.

I understand that since the system isnt offline, it wont be a "mirror" image as files change, but thats ok.

Are there any free/commercial products that would work?

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