Clone partition using rsync

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

On my laptop i intend to make a small partition on my hdd to backup my ssd to in case something happens during firmware updates
so i want rsync to copy links as links and not follow them
don't follow file system mounts (eg /home and /media)
preserve file permissions and ownership

[oldfred]

I include this as part of my rsync script so I know what I am doing.

#!/bin/bash
# backup script - mybackup.sh
# a - archive, retain file settings equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X)
# r - recursive / subdirectories
# u - update, only newer
# v - verbose
# P - keep partial files and report progress
# -l, --links copy symlinks as symlinks
# -i, --itemize-changes
# -t, --times preserve modification times
# --exclude option to prevent copying things

I started simple like this one:
Originally Posted by MountainX View Post #20 also other backup apps
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...ghlight=backup

Then I added an extract of installed files with dpkg, and a new run of bootinfoscript and some other system documentation files just to have them. The I found most of my copy was a lot of temporary files or cache and added an excludes file.

Some files to exclude from /home backup - post by Paddy Landau
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1883834

I do not do this as I manually copy any file I manually edit into another folder in /home for backup.

More detail on /etc files to backup - post #3:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1500559


Some more examples:
http://rsync.samba.org/examples.html

Backup to external with check of mounted & email
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1701292
rsync confirmation list:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1692800
Check for mount of backup partition
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1701292
#http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1555647&page=4
more scripts:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1319155