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    Maybe disk-based version control mechanisms? If you hardlink something, then it's not a backup. If the original file gets corrupted, every hardlink to it gets corrupted too. Commented Mar 18, 2011 at 19:04
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    Think of incremental backup systems like Apple's Time Machine. (It should be obvious that these aren't disaster recovery type backups, but "oops, I deleted that file by accident" backups.) All unchanged files in an incremental backup are hardlinked together; when the file is changed, the next incremental copies it instead of linking to the previous version. Commented Mar 18, 2011 at 19:09
  • Thanks, then incremental backup systems are pretty similar to version control systems this way =D Commented Mar 18, 2011 at 19:22
  • But how does the incremental backup mechanism preserve the "old" version of a file? 1) Backup A created, it hardlinked file F; 2) File F modified; 3) next day Backup B created... Looks like I don't get something Commented Mar 1, 2013 at 16:00