Git as a backup and Version Control System

Question

I want to use Git to backup my home drive, but I also want to use it as a version control system for projects that will be stored in my home drive.

How would I go about doing that? Do I .gitignore all the projects root folders and make new repositories for them?

Edit:

Ok I explained what I wanted wrongly. I want to have a history of changes made to my home drive like I can get with Git and I also want to back that up.

Answer 1

I wrote a blog post about this a while back:

Version control systems, with the possible exception of SourceSafe, are great at keeping track of code. Why is that? Because they were designed to keep track of code.

Unfortunately, though, the features of a good VCS are entirely different – and often exactly the opposite – of the features which make a good backup system.

Take, for example, file ownership. A good VCS will, very rightly, ignore file ownership: when I check out someone else's code, I should be the owner of those file - not whatever uid originally created them. A good backup system, on the other hand, will do everything in its power to preserve file ownership: when I restore from my backups, I want /etc/shaddow to be owned by root and /home/wolever/ to be owned by wolever.

BUT, if you really want to, check out bup - as far as I can tell, it does backup with git "right".

Answer 2

Use rsync for backup. Use git for version control.