I use rsnapshot to automate this hard link creation and backup rotations hourly, daily, weekly, monthly. You still use cron or something else (I've used Launchd

I use rsnapshot to automate this hard link creation and backup rotations hourly, daily, weekly, monthly. You still use cron or something else (I've used Launchd on OS X systems) to schedule the runs but rsnapshot takes care of the rest.