Howto: Backup and restore your system!

[scorp123]

If I've excluded a folder (say, "/home") and I extract the TAR archive with " tar xvpfz backup.tgz -C / ", will it actively delete the excluded folder when extracting

If you have excluded a folder when you created the archive then there are no contents of that folder in the archive in the first place. So when you extract your files again then there should be nothing that the excluded folder(s) can be overwritten with. And nope, it should not delete any files on the filesystem just because they are not present in the archive. That would be deeply counter-productive and I have never observed such behaviour so far.

But you could check ... Have tar list the contents, e.g.

tar tzvf backup_filename.tar.gz | more

.. that should list the contents of the archive and you'd see if anything would be overwritten. So in your case there shouldn't be any files going into /home ... If that's the case then nothing underneath /home should be overwritten or deleted.

[hackNperl]

Has anyone ever used CloneMaxx? http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/clon...htm?language=1

[thecure]

Instead of ghosting the whole drive image, I prefer to use rsync to back up my data on an external drive but works great with NAS. Lots of resources to look at on how to do it... I'm sure on the forums somewhere.



http://www.arsgeek.com/?p=637

http://users.softlab.ece.ntua.gr/~ttsiod/backup.html

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/rsync

rdiff looks very interesting also

http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/

[TheTouti]

Hi Forum,

I decided to get rid of Vista (I know, please don't even say it ) and move to Linux so I've installed Ubuntu Desktop. The first thing I want to learn is how to backup/restore so I checked this thread.

I didn't read all the 55 pages as it would have taken too much time and I apologize if the answer to my question is already there somewhere but I'm wondering how one would restore from a compressed file in the case of a hard disk crash.

I understand that if my OS or data gets corrupted or something I can boot from Live CD, copy my backup file back on the disk and decompress it but what if I have to change the HD ?

Would I have to install Ubuntu first and decompress my backup on top of it ? Would that restore all my programs and configurations and make my new Ubuntu installation the same as the previous one ?

I know I would certainly not try this in Windows.

[ACGarland]

One approach is to use MondoRescue which allows you to backup and recover your machine from 'bare metal', even in situations where the restore hardware (partitions, etc.) differ from when the backup was made.

http://www.mondorescue.org/

[Patsoe]

...Would I have to install Ubuntu first and decompress my backup on top of it ? Would that restore all my programs and configurations and make my new Ubuntu installation the same as the previous one ?

I know I would certainly not try this in Windows.

You would use a LiveCD to partition and format your new hard disk, then you would decompress the archive onto the new hard disk. At this point, you'd already have a working system except it can't boot itself yet. However, you can then chroot to "hand over control" from the LiveCD to the restored system, and then tell the system to reconfigure the GRUB boot loader.

In fact, even with another motherboard and chipset than in your original system you still have a good chance of pulling this off (unless the hardware is too new). And no, you wouldn't be able to do something like that with a Windows system

(edit: actually I just ran into this post http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=764684 - you need a few more steps to get it going on a system that's set up to mount by uuid)

[rugbert]

What kind of compression rate does tar have?

Im not sure but I think my backups are missing somethings.

using df I calculated that my total disk usage is about 9.3 gigs but my backups are only 3 gigs. I mean thats some crazy stuff good compression right there.

also - somewhere in the thread was an option to have cron make logs for the backups right?

[psyion]

I have a dual boot setup for vista and ubuntu (latest) i have almostf inished setting up both windows and linux teh way i want after i formated a week ago.

If i use this method will it back my windows and linux systems up so i can just run teh restore command and get a totaly clean fully customised windows and linux? Will it work for both or just linux?

Thanks guys

[erginemr]

I have a dual boot setup for vista and ubuntu (latest) i have almostf inished setting up both windows and linux teh way i want after i formated a week ago.

If i use this method will it back my windows and linux systems up so i can just run teh restore command and get a totaly clean fully customised windows and linux? Will it work for both or just linux?

Thanks guys

This method will back up only your Linux partition. For Windows, you will have to use some proprietary software, such as Norton Ghost...

[Patsoe]

This method will back up only your Linux partition. For Windows, you will have to use some proprietary software, such as Norton Ghost...

The particular recipe given in this tutorial will indeed only back up the Ubuntu file system. That doesn't however mean that you need proprietary software to back up a Windows partition. You could well do that with e.g. dd. Also, partimage has experimental support for NTFS.