Backing up files to NTFS using .tar?

[Steve the Pocket]

Since I've given up any hope of finding a fix for the thing that screwed up my system, I've decided to just give up and reinstall from scratch. But I have some files in my /home/steve folder (particularly my Firefox history and bookmarks, and the game data in my Steam folder) that I want to hang on to. I've heard that if I zip them up into a .tar.gz file, I can move that onto an NTFS drive and back without losing the permissions data and such. How would I go about doing that (including mounting the NTFS drive to start with), in a single session where I only have access to the command line?

[oshunluvr]

This gets you a tarball

tar cvzf stevehome.tar.gz /home/steve/

I'm assuming this is a dual boot machine and you have a windows partition you're moving the file to? Just mount it and copy the tarball over to it. Then when you're done re-installing, move it over and unpack it using ark.

[oshunluvr]

Can I suggest when you do the re-install you create a separate /home partition? It will prevent you having to do this again - just in case

[woodsmoke]

Ok, I've done this....but really....we have SO MUCH "memory" in a variety of hardware and software configure configurations....

tar....zip....or just save it to a usb stick in whatever format....and also save to a "cd" which cannot be corrupted...

I still have....from Xandros days.... a "format thing" about Amarok from a "real" Linux person that is on a cd....and when I do a new install of ANYthing...I just get the cd out and load it and Amarok works...

don't get hung up on "how" you do it... just do it.

woodsmoke

[Steve the Pocket]

And the mounting part? I've never done that from the command line either.

[oshunluvr]

All you need a is target location, like /mnt, and the partition device name, like /dev/sda1:

sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/sda1 /mnt

Then the mounted partition will be /mnt

[Steve the Pocket]

Well, I got the file made and moved, and I reinstalled Kubuntu successfully. But now I'm having trouble getting the files back out of the archive. Ark is omitting some of the folders, particularly .steam and .mozilla, which were the whole reason I made this backup. I know they're in there because the file is easily as big as all of them combined (32 GB), and I watched their files scroll past when it was getting packed up. Is it possible they're just hidden due to a permissions issue? (I know files and folders that start with a period are "hidden" normally, but there are a few such folders visible in Ark, so it's not that.)

[oshunluvr]

Well, I did a test: I created a new archive, added one hidden folder and one not-hidden to it. Then did a full extract to a new folder and everything arrived safe and sound.

When you open the archive with ark, you should be able to see the hidden files and folders in the list.

[Steve the Pocket]

Hmm. I tried opening the archive in 7-Zip in Windows. It started doing what looked like a long decompression process, and then it popped up an error "There are data after the end of the file." Does this mean the archive file was corrupted and stuck an EOF somewhere in the middle, and that's why half the directories are coming up missing?

EDIT: I should probably mention that I was unable to get the mounting to work so I just transferred the file to my Windows drive using DiskInternals Linux Reader. If the file is corrupted, that's probably the reason.

[jlittle]

(Now that you mention a corrupt file, and just in case you aren't aware of this.)
If you copy a large file using dolphin, dolphin starts a copy job in the background, and does not wait for it to finish. A "notification" item shows you the progress of the job, and tells you when it's finished. If you unplugged the drive to soon, expecting dolphin to work like windows explorer, one would get a corrupt file.

Regards, John Little