Backup

[.one.]

Hi the last time i used linux was with RedHat 5.2 just installed Ubuntu and was wondering what people recommend for backing up there systems please ?

many thanks jay.

 

[.one.]

To what do you want to back up? DVDs? Internal HDDs? External HDDs? Another machine over the network? Another machine over the Internet? Do you want to back up everything, or just your user files?

I wish to backup my linux installstion like a disk image if you like.

Like acronis true image the eqiv for linux.

 

[.one.]

Use the dd command as root. The syntax is
dd if=/location/of/disk/to/copy of=/destination/disk/or/file

So to back up your whole system to a file use
sudo dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/home/one/Desktop/bak-6-Feb-2009.img

Restore it with
sudo dd if=/home/one/Desktop/bak-6-Feb-2009.img of=/dev/sda1

You can compress the resulting image file with gzip or whatever you want assuming the data is easily compressed. Video and audio, for instance, do not compress much.

There are tons of other great ways to do this as well. Rsync is probably better if you're going to do frequent backups to another machine.

Thanks very much for your help.

jay.

 

[.one.]

partimage should be included with most livecd's, i recommend sysresccd.
partimage won't copy unused sectors so makes for a smaller backup.

This seems more my cup of tea.

Thx jay.