There are few things more satisfying than a good backup
Introduction
Backups rely for the most part, on *unix at least (something called "cron" jobs), wikipedia defines cron as follows:-
Cron is a time-based job scheduler in Unix-like computer operating systems. The name cron comes from the word "chronos", Greek for "time". Cron enables users to schedule jobs (commands or shell scripts) to run periodically at certain times or dates. It is commonly used to automate system maintenance or administration, though its general-purpose nature means that it can be used for other purposes, such as connecting to the Internet and downloading email.
Cron is without doubt the workhorse of the *unix system it schedules all the jobs you want completed at a certain time. You need to think of cron as nothing more than an alarm clock. The only difference with this alarm clock is that multiple alarms can be set to run multiple single instruction commands or scripts. You perhaps better off to think of cron as a table this table allows instructions by way of digits, wild cards and commands that can be entered on one or more instances.
Backup and Restore
A hard disk can be composed of many things but essentially the only data it holds is a series of 0 (zero's) and 1 (ones) most of what is contained within a hard disk therefore is empty space ie a 0 (zero's) that being the case it should be possible to design an algorithm that takes advantage of this and save only the data needed, well we have news for you such an application is already available.