Please Help: Need to Backup home folder to external drive via terminal

[noob555]

Hello all. I have apparently broken my installation, though I am uncertain how. I can boot into the terminal, but the desktop shell refuses to load under any circumstances. The best thing I can think of is to simply reinstall.

But before I reinstall, I need to backup my home folder to the external drive.

I found a program called rsync that seems easy enough, but I cannot figure out the location of my external usb drive.


Can anyone tell me how to do this?

Please?


FYI, I'm using Linux Mint 9

[Perfect Storm]

Moved to Other OS/Distro Talk.

[mips]

Double post.

[mips]

I found a program called rsync that seems easy enough, but I cannot figure out the location of my external usb drive.

Can anyone tell me how to do this?

Please?


You are on the right tract.



sudo fdisk -l

I just inserted 4GB flash drive to test it and it is picked up as:

Disk /dev/sdi: 4026 MB, 4026531840 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 489 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0008c349

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdi1 * 1 490 3932128+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(488, 254, 63) logical=(489, 135, 30)

In my case it is /dev/sdi1 but for you it will be different.