Backups and restore

[penguin.ch]

Re: Backups and restore

Don't panic (not yet ...)

You are right: dd factually means cloning every single bit, no questions asked, no exceptions made ... what for? If you ruined your file system, you could simply replay the clone and start over.

To backup merely a couple of files, however, such cloning would be absolute overkill, as you guessed right - instead, plain copying (cp) will suffice.

[Oberiko]

Re: Backups and restore

Alright.

Would CP also copy my configurations? So if I put the CP'd stuff into a backup directory, and then I ruined my system (say a mounting gone badly), I could restore from the CP everything from my system basically as it was?

[penguin.ch]

Re: Backups and restore

In theory, yes (- traditional Unix backup tools like tar are based on this concept, anyhow).

From my experience, no - the only working "restore" method I know of, remains "cloning".