"The thing about backups is that they can just be a pain. Everyone knows just how important they are, but very few people actually take the time to perform proper backups. Even after they have felt the pain of losing all those important files.
"In this article I am going to show you how to quickly set up your computer for simple, hassle-free, and transparent backups using only rsync and cron (or Anacron). The premise is simple: every night your computer will make an automatic mirror of all the files you wish to backup, and at chosen intervals these mirrors will be archived and kept for a specified period of time..."