Best full-system backup utility?

[dibl]

Re: Best full-system backup utility?

To me, it's really a philosophical question. Since the days of MS-DOS 3.x, I have subscribed to the "back up your data, not your software" theory. That theory says that your software (a) can always be re-installed if needed, and (b) changes fairly often anyway, so it "ages"* when backed up.

Therefore I have always segregated my data (some Windows software has required special twiddling at the time of installation and first use, to accomplish this) from my installed software, and focussed my backup efforts on making sure there's a valid copy of all my data somewhere safe. The principle "somewhere" is on a second or third hard drive on the same machine. But, recognizing that there are some catastrophes that take out the entire system (and/or the house that it lives in), really important stuff should be on long-lived media at some other address.

Therefore, my answer to "which utility" question is

cp

* Downloaded software that is prized should be copied to a safe second location prior to installing. Those old downloaded tarballs and zip files have saved my sorry butt more than once.

[Qqmike]

Re: Best full-system backup utility?

Well said, dibl. Especially like the nice justification for Favorite Utility being cp (Now I don't feel so silly/stupid/alone). Fact is, one could also rip a quick dd image file of their root partition, I've tested that, it works, but I don't even do that anymore. My "new" dd how-to shows how,
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde....msg216356#new .
Of course, as part of my data backup, I also drag/copy my Thunderbird and Firefox profile folders to one of my personal folders, so those get copied too as part of my data backup. I also keep flash drives handy to do quick on-the-fly backups of work in-progress or new data just in case something happens before I have a chance to do the regularly scheduled data backup.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Best full-system backup utility?

The tar technique I used is HERE.

[Snowhog]

Re: Best full-system backup utility?

All your input/comments/suggestions/justifications are appreciated. Really.

For me, making a 'bare metal' backup of my OS (root and separate /home) provides me with the 'peace of mind "security"' that I want/need. It allows that, should my HD fail or I get a new rig, I can quickly 'restore' a fully-functional, ready-to-use OS as of the last bare-metal backup. That is sufficient, for me.

[Telengard]

Re: Best full-system backup utility?

I was actually looking for GG's scripts when I posted my initial reply, but didn't find it. Glad to see he mentioned it.

cp is a fine way to go. It is a built in to the OS, so you don't have to worry about being without it when it's time to restore, and it has plenty of options to tweak your backups however you like. The only problem is if your backup media uses a non-Unix filesystem. You'll lose all ownership and permissions on all your files. This is the case on NTFS volumes and optical media as well. In these cases it is better to have your files tucked away in a container such as tar or a disk image.

Another downside to cp is that your backups are uncompressed. Of course that's less of a worry if you have a very large backup media.

[Qqmike]

Re: Best full-system backup utility?

@Telengard -- good points about cp.

On topic:
I already said how I do it, so I'm not much help here (I use cp for data only; in special cases, I MAY dd image my root / partition to a file (usually located in my /home)).

One thing I do with critical flash drives (bootable or not) is to clone them to an identical flash drive unit, they are small enough that the copy goes quickly:
dd if=/dev/sdx of=/dev/sdy bs=4096 conver=noerror,notrunc
Exact same thing can be done with hard drives. If sdx fails, replace it with sdy and you are ready to boot (MBR, GRUB, partitions and file systems are all ready to go). (Tech note, as explained in my dd how-to: I can see no reason for notrunc, but since so many other writers use it, I will; it doesn't hurt, but is unnecessary in this specific case; noerror: dd will not stop on errors. One way to check a drive is to do dd if=/dev/sdx of=/dev/null bs=4096 and if dd encounters an error, it will stop and print a report. Finally, dcfldd in in the repos, a modified version of dd--faster, it does some verifying, very nice for a big clone job like this.

[Snowhog]

Re: Best full-system backup utility?

Revisiting this question.

Anyone used/using KBackup?

[GreyGeek]

Re: Best full-system backup utility?

I had never seen KBackup before but after your post about it I downloaded and looked at it.
It appears to be a nice, simple gui to tar, which includes separate directory AND file selections, full backups, incremental backups BUT NOT restore. It does include the ability to slice the tar file into segments that would allow backing up to multiple media. It gave an example of backing up to a 100 MB Zip disk, but they haven't been around since the early 2000's. I've got 1 GB of data setting on Zip disks that haven't been accessible since my Zip drive started emitting that lethal "click, click, click...". But, if one were backing up, say, 10 or 20 GB of data they could slice the tar into 4.7GB sizes and save them on several DVDs.

I also noticed that it doesn't not include the ability to use the sparse and create tar options. See here for an explanation of the need for sparse. The "new profile" option does not include settings that involve sparse, create or other tar parameters, like how to treat sockets, devices, etc... This is a major shortfall.

KBackup would be really nice IF the "New Profile" dialog had settings for all the tar parameters so that using sparse and such could be selected.

[Snowhog]

Re: Best full-system backup utility?

Well, made my first backup using tar. Used your scripts as a guide and created my own, putting it in /usr/bin. The backup is to my external USB Seagate 500GB HD. I exclude /proc, /sys, lost+found, and /mnt (I never have anything attached on /media when backing up, so I don't bother excluding it).

So now I have two ways to backup my system: Clonezilla and tar.