HDD on the way out, any way to image install?

[chadwell]

I have a laptop which I use as a NAS. The internal HDD is dying and I'm getting a lot read errors. I am going to buy a new harddrive, partition it and put ubuntu on it. But I'm wondering if there is a simple way I can reinstall my version of ubuntu, with all the programs and settings etc.

It would save me a whole lot of hassle.

Be even better if I could do all this via usb stick.

Any ideas?

[Redalien0304]

Clonezilla or Redobackup

[chadwell]

Thanks - seems you need a cd for those, any way to use USB? <edit> - sorry looks like you can use USB after all

[chadwell]

On my current setup I have a 1TB drive, this is partitioned to have 15GB for the O/S, and the rest is for files (music, video etc). The large partition is under sda3/media/NAS.
Anyway to *only* image the smaller partition - where all the O/S info should be?

[oldfred]

While many like and use Clonezilla, I suggest the clean install. It then automatically housecleans and avoids issues of duplicate UUIDs in grub & fstab. If not keeping old drive the duplicate UUID is not as large of an issue.

With a clean install you do want to have /home and a list of installed applications. But that should be part of your normal backup.
Oldfred's list of stuff to backup May 2011:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1748541
backup the following:

1. /home (Users' personal files and settings) including keys in ~/.gnupg
2. /etc (System-wide configuration settings)
3. /var/spool/cron/crontabs (Commands which run automatically)
4. The script to generate the backup
5. list of installed applications

Also if a server do you have any other applications that save data into / like a database? Then you also need to back up those folders. And you may have custom settings in /etc but do not reinstall as new system may not need them or they may conflict if a new install.

[chadwell]

Thanks for the reply.Just saw it after having used clonezilla to make a "saved parts" backup.

I Backed up my sda2 partition to a usb stick.


if I get a new hdd, and partition it and put ubuntu on sda2, can I just restore my backup to the new sda2?


Does it have to be the same size, and same format I.e. ext3.Could I use ext4 instead?
Will all my apps and data be restored?


Thanks!

[chadwell]

Just looking clarification of above. If I put in a brand new HDD, do I need to reinstall Ubuntu completely - or is it sufficient to restore my "saved parts" clonezilla backup to the fresh HDD. Which is my SDA2 partition. I did not save my SDA3 partition as this is the NAS part of my HDD which contains all music, movies etc.