So if I was to use the CP command to backup to a second drive would this work .....

cp -a --target-directory=/backup /home /usr /var /root /etc

where /backup is hdc1, my second drive.

Does this get me what I need and preserve ownership and permissions? A small test looked like the cp -a keeps all the owner and permissions intact. Is this the way to go to protect against drive failure? I could also tar up /home and ftp it to protect against deleted file mistakes by users.

Would this be a reasonable procedure to do on a small server with 40gb drive that's pushing only about 4gb of traffic per month.
Could I do it every night on a cron job?

Suggestions anyone?

Should this really be in the howto section?

Regardless, here is typically what I do.

tar czf /path/to/target.tgz /path/to/source/*

Where the target is generally an NFS mount, or a secondary drive, or in some cases just a normal dir on the same drive, where the resulting tarball is transferred over the network at a later date.

Is this a reasonable procedure?.. Of course, you should always keep backups of important data. Even backups of some not so important data have saved me in the past.

Thanks for the reply. Am I in the wrong spot? I thought "How to" would be right as I want to know "How to" ...

Would you typically add the -p switch to preserve permissions?