I've been reading up on 'best backup system' and so on but thought I'd ask here for people who may run a similar setup.

I've just built up an Ubuntu server and was going to set up RAID but then thought what I really want is a simple back up. So I've got two 2TB SAS drives one of which has the OS on it the other totally blank. The backup has to be command line and run once a night backing up specified directories. I'd prefer it not to be compressed and was thinking that it would simply write over itself every night. A restoration process might be nice but not really necessary.

What are you all using?

I suppose it would boil down to personal preference and what specific features you are looking for in your backup solution. I don't have one specific in mind but "simple" could be rsync+cron would probably suffice.

We would also probably need to know what exactly you are wanting to backup and your "mttr" so to say. Then we could use that as a guideline for what your requirements would be.

We tend to make two backups. One is a complete system image of a clean install. Then some form of data backup.

rsnapshot

it uses hard links to save space, and will let you keep as many versions as you like.

I suppose a system image would be a good idea too. This is my no means a mission critical server. It's just for home and all I want to back up are my music, images, documents and video type files.

rsnapshot as mentioned above will probably do what you want with a default install.
And you really *do* need to keep multiple copies. One day you will update a file and a couple of days later want the old version. Believe me, it will happen.

As for the O/S, I find it easier to simply re-install and import my data in need. Horses for courses.

As others have stated OS can easily be reinstalled. So, personally I don't backup anything outside of ~/
If I do modify anything outside of home, I document it.
I use tar and with tar there is option for doing incremental backups.

Ok cool. Thank you. I appreciate the suggestions.