Large backup

[LeeU]

I have been getting some very serious error codes when my system boots up (so far it failed once to boot to the GUI and went to the command line), so I am thinking I need to get a new hard drive. My main problem is that I have failed to keep current backups so I have approx. 32 GB that need to be backed up (my entire home dir, basically). What is the best way to back up that much data?

I'm currently running Ubuntu 8.04 (I know, I should have upgraded earlier but medical problems kept me from doing so.), my disk size is 218.5 GB with 153.8 GB free. 20 GB of my home dir is VirtualBox so I don't really need to back that up, after obtaining the software from there, as well as a couple dirs that only have backed-up [i.e., copies] of old data that I can delete)

Any ideas?

(I figure since I am having start-up problems I will need to leave my system up and running until I get an answer so I'm hoping I can solve this quickly, and I WILL put a back-up plan into place once I have a new drive, along with a separate home partition.)

[JonRohan]

Do you have a usb hard drive? You could plug that in and backup from command line if required.

[LeeU]

No, unfortunately I don't.

[TiBaal89]

If you don't have a backup of your stuff, you need to create one. External drives with the space you require are extremely inexpensive. Get one and copy your stuff before your internal drive takes a dump. Once that is repaired, look into how you can use the external in conjunction with your computer to avoid this risk in the future.

A backup from scratch for the purpose of repairing and then restoring your computer is as simple as copying the files to that external disk (via GUI or the 'cp' command if you like).

[LeeU]

Yeah, I realize I need to create a backup. The external is a good idea, and it made me realize that I could use my Acer Aspire One netbook as an "external drive". It has a 160 GB hard drive of which I have used very little. I can just copy through my network. Thanks for all the help.

Any suggestions on a good replacement hard drive?