daniel
See the "Backup config" wiki Howto article. You are best to use a sme backup & restore solution as the mysql databases are dumped, and proper pre and post signal events are run, for both backups and restores.
I don't quite understand why you need a full backup everytime. You can do one full backup (which takes a long time), and then numerous incremental backups (which usually only take a few minutes depending on how much data has changed).
Using the GUI server manager Backup or restore panel options, you can selectively restore individual files, and you can select any date to restore your whole system to. The restore grabs information from the full backup and the chosen daily incremental backup to rebuild the server as it was on that day, except for installed applications (where they are not in ibays).
If you want a full and a incremental on the one "disk" to remove off site, then have multiple disks and initially run a full backup on each of them, then rotate the disks adding only (quicker to do) incrementals. Set the backup parameters appropriately of course.
Note tha Backup or restore panel gives you an estimate of the actual data being backed up, if you are unsure of the backup data size. My speed comments were based on that amount of total space used on your hard drive. If less, then it should be significantly quicker.
If you want quick backups on a regular basis, which includes the whole system, including applications, and assuming you are using RAID1, then put one drive into a removable caddie or front panel "HDD slot", and simply swap out one drive of the RAID array. Put the new drive in and run Manage disks (or similar name) from the Console to rebuild the array. Yes you do need to shutdown the server as current kernels do not support hot swap, but it will take less than 5 minutes, far quicker than waiting 7.5 hours.
You have to "zero" or blank the replacement drive if it already has data on it. Search the wiki and forums, it has been mentioned many times.
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