need help finding an image backup app

[unknowable]

Hi everyone. I wasn't sure where to go with this. I'm looking for a GUI based imaging solution for my PC. I need to schedule an encrypted weekly full image with daily incremental backups. It needs to backup the entire filesystem (including GRUB and all necessary boot files) as well as the MBR to an external drive (/media/unknowable/2_TB/ or /dev/sdc1 and sdc2). I need it to backup all necessary files to restore from nothing, so I need to be able to make a bootable USB drive with a recovery option on it. Oh, and I also need it to delete old image files when I need the space.

In windoze I used Macrium Reflect Workstation because it supported advanced, scheduled, encrypted backups, but I cannot find a FOSS solution for linux that meets all of my needs, though I open to a paid solution if that's the only option. Yes, I did check Google. Here's the search line I used (for an advanced Google search):

best backup software AND incremental AND image OR imaging AND kubuntu OR ubuntu OR linux

Of course I found list after list of backup apps. I've been through several lists, installed tons of programs, and found nothing that meets all of my needs. If you know of a program or suite that fits all of the above criteria, please let me know.

[unknowable]

Oh, and I prefer not to get a package that will *sync* the drive for me. I don't want RAID - that leaves no room for system errors. If I screw up a system file, it's backed up immediately in the screwed up form, so I can't just go back to last night's backup and restore that file - I'm just screwed. Unfortunately, I'm too new to linux to use something that backs up everything as I do it - that leaves me no room for error, and nullifies one of the reasons I back up my drive. I really need a solution that runs once a day on a schedule, allowing me to make system changes and reboot with last night's image file as a backup in case I make an unrecoverable error. I need protection from myself.

Thanks for your time and help.

[jlittle]

I can't answer your question directly, but it seems to me you have a limited vision about solutions.

Oh, and I prefer not to get a package that will *sync* the drive for me. I don't want RAID - that leaves no room for system errors. If I screw up a system file, it's backed up immediately in the screwed up form, so I can't just go back to last night's backup and restore that file - I'm just screwed.

A good incremental backup approach does not have this fault. Using a copy-on-write file system (btrfs or ZFS) or an rsync-based approach stores only changes, and if you backup daily, every day's backup is available until the backup media fills up. So if you screw up a file today, yesterday's backup is still accessible tomorrow. Last week's is still there next week.

I'm confused by your insistence that the backup must have everything. I'd expect system software to need a different backup schedule to your data. You do need to be able to restore from nothing, but insisting on an image backup ("as well as the MBR") to one destination is quite limiting and unreliable. (BTW, MBRs are obsolete in 2021.) I suspect your ideas on this have roots in Windows where MS frowns on copying the OS, and makes it difficult. Windows historically was such a mission to get up and needed software installed that image backups were invented.

I suspect you really should have a NAS as part of your backup solution. Some of them come with nice GUIs, and you benefit from the vendor's expertise with backups.

[unknowable]

...
I'm confused by your insistence that the backup must have everything. I'd expect system software to need a different backup schedule to your data. You do need to be able to restore from nothing, but insisting on an image backup ("as well as the MBR") to one destination is quite limiting and unreliable. (BTW, MBRs are obsolete in 2021.) I suspect your ideas on this have roots in Windows where MS frowns on copying the OS, and makes it difficult. Windows historically was such a mission to get up and needed software installed that image backups were invented.

Well, I only have the two hard drives, a 1TB internal drive that the system is on, and a 2TB external drive that I'm using for backup. I don't want to use online storage because I already go over my ISP's bandwidth limit every month, and backing up online will take a lot of bandwidth. I need to back up about 800GB on the weekly image backup, then whatever I use up every day in incremental backups. Cloud storage does not work for my connection, not to mention that I don't want my backup online, in case I can't get to it in an emergency.

Yes, I am a lifelong Windows user. I started on Win 3.1 (yes, *before* 3.11), and I used it until this last week when I switched to Kubuntu. So yes, I am definitely new. I'm just going by what I know works for me, but if there's a better way to do things, I really want to know about it.

I suspect you really should have a NAS as part of your backup solution. Some of them come with nice GUIs, and you benefit from the vendor's expertise with backups.

Hm. I'll look into this in a minute after I reboot. I'm moving the partitions around on my primary drive using the Kubuntu USB boot drive, like you suggested. Dang you're a genius. Thanks for all your help, jlittle. I'll update in just a minute.

[unknowable]

I checked into NAS as you suggested, jlittle. I really want to stick with a local solution simply because I may not have internet access in an emergency situation like a hard drive failure. Just to be really careful, I want on-site backups for now. If there's a catastrophe that causes both my hard drives to fail at the same time (like a house fire,) I'll probably have more important things to worry about than just my data. I'll look more into NAS in the future someday I'm sure, but for now I want everything local. Sorry, but thanks for the suggestion.

That leaves me with a couple of thumb drives, a 1TB drive, and a 2TB drive. It only seems sensible to me to use the 1TB drive for everyday use and the 2TB drive for backup. If anyone has a better idea, please let me know. Thank you again for your attention and assistance. I'm learning a whole dang lot, and it's because of you and people just like you. Thank you.

Obviously I would have to reboot to do that. Any Kubuntu iso will be both bootable to trial mode as well as having KPM installed and ready to use. If I can just copy the partitions, it would be easiest to do it that way, at least for a one time solution. No compression, no filesystem checks, no encryption, but for a one time use, acceptable.

[jlittle]

That leaves me with a couple of thumb drives, a 1TB drive, and a 2TB drive. It only seems sensible to me to use the 1TB drive for everyday use and the 2TB drive for backup.

Not the best, many would regard a 3-2-1 backup strategy as a minimum. (3 backups on 2 different media, with 1 off site.) (I can't say attain that at the moment, and I won't till I get back into the office.)

If you need to stick to just the 2 TB, using btrfs with incrementals might let you have several weekly and several monthly backups on that 2 TB, depending on how much of that 1 TB is new data every week. I don't know of a simple GUI that supports that, but I've never looked for one. OpenSUSE have been doing this for years, maybe they've got a GUI solution that would suit you.

With USB 3, a USB to SATA adapter for a few dollars makes using laptop 2.5" drives feasible. I harvest them from old laptops.

[jglen490]

A backup solution requires backing up data from an active drive to a removable/detachable drive. Saving another copy of stuff on your active drive is NOT a backup.

Here's what I do. I have four available drives in removable, USB attached, enclosures. I rotate among them each time I make a backup. I use rsync on the command line to make each backup.

My backup strategy may be a bit different than what others do, as I only backup /home. I always keep the most recent OS on a USB thumb drive. I have not lost a drive (HDD or SSD) in a very long time, but I have done stupid things to /home, on occasion, and have successfully restored /home data when needed.

The key is, whatever you backup, it is only restorable if it is kept on a drive that is not your current active drive.

[GreyGeek]

The only backups that would "have everything" are snapshots using BTRFS or ZFS. The GUI app to use for BTRFS would be TimeShift.

Your situation is similar to mine. I have 3 SSD's in my 2012 Acer Aspire V3-771G laptop. My primary and secondary are 500GB SSD's and my 3rd is a 1TB SSD. In addition, I have several USB rust buckets setting in HDCaddies.
I've used BTRFS since 2016. It has been faultless for me. YMMV.

I do a backup every night just before I shut down, AND, just before any major changes to my system, like a 50 package update or before I begin a new experiment, like building a WINE environment for the two EXE's I use, or installing a complicated jupyter notebook module. If I encounter problems it takes only seconds to restore my most recent snapshot and then reboot. Otherwise, if I just mess up a file, or delete it, or a folder, I can use Dolphin to browse a snapshot on my 2nd or 3rd SSD and bring the latest copy back to my working system.

I wrote my own script to back up my system, AND, I run a hybrid BTRFS system in which I've merged @home with @ and commented out the line in fstab that mounts @home to /home. That way, I only need to snapshot @ (which is my entire system). Creating a snapshot of it:

sudo btrfs su snapshot -r /mnt/@ /mnt/snapshots/@yyyymmddhh

takes only a second or two and uses almost zero space. It's a "read-only" (-r) snapshot and can't be accidentally erased.
At the same time my script also creates an incremental backup of my system to my 1TB SSD.

sudo btrfs send -p /mnt/snapshots/@yesterday /mnt/snapshots/@todays | btrfs receive /backup

That takes maybe 10 seconds, + or - 5, depending on how much has changed between yesterday's snapshot and today's snapshot.

BTRFS can be installed as the <ROOT_FS> during the install process. It is auto-tuning and has only a couple user settings.
On more recent versions of Ubuntu/Kubuntu, 19.10 or greater, ZFS can be installed as the <ROOT_FS>. It has about 4 dozen tuning settings. And, AFAIK, TimeShift does not see ZFS pools. For the average laptop user BTRFS is the better choice.

Switching to BTRFS would, or course, require reinstalling Kubuntu and following the manual HD install route. I use the lzo compression and that reduces the amount of used space on the SSD without too much of a performance penalty. There are many YT videos explaining how. And, there is a BTRFS subforum here.

[oshunluvr]

Slight correction: BTRFS with any compression selected is faster than no compression in all except threaded I/O because the compression is done on the fly resulting in less read/write bits, thus an increase in performance because less is being written/read and drive access is the bottleneck. LZO compression is faster than ZLIB.