Hassle-free Backup with Déjà Dup

Productivity Sauce

The Déjà Dup backup utility may not be the most powerful or flexible backup tool out there, but it does have its advantages. Its straightforward interface makes it dead-easy to configure backups, while the support for the Amazon S3 storage back-end is a boon for users looking for unlimited backup storage on the cheap. In addition to that, Déjà Dup supports incremental backups, and it can encrypt and compress data during the backup operation. Besides Amazon S3, Déjà Dup supports other types of remote storage, including FTP, Windows shares, WebDAV, and SSH. And you can use Déjà Dup to perform scheduled backups.

To install Déjà Dup on Ubuntu, you have to add the project's repository first using the following command:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:deja-dup-team/ppa

Use then the commands below to install Déjà Dup on your machine:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install deja-dup

Once Déjà Dup has been installed, launch it by choosing Applications | System Tools | Déjà Dup Backup Tool. Hit the Backup button to open a wizard which helps you to configure the backup.

Most of the options in the wizard are self-explanatory, so you shouldn't have problems configuring the backup settings (you can edit them later by choosing Edit | Preferences). Once you've configured the backup settings, you can start using Déjà Dup. Since there are only two buttons -- Backup and Restore -- using Déjà Dup is as easy as it gets. Better yet, if you enabled the scheduled backup option, the utility will perform the backup operation automatically.

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