Looking for a backup strategy

[AnotherUser]

I am looking for a backup strategy for my laptop. Yes, I searched in the forums for "backup" and read the numerous posts but I still don't have a good backup strategy. Here is where I am right now:

• I know that I want to backup not just my personal data, but also the rest of the system.
• I know that some people have recommended that a backup of the system is not worth it because it is so easy to just reinstall the OS from a LiveCD. I do not agree with this because the LiveCD did not "just work" for my laptop. I had to spend days tweaking it after installation
• I know that MyLiveCD would be a good way to make an ISO of everything on my system, but it has a limitation of 4GB. Since I have the Full Monty install (and them some from SYnaptic), this is not an option
• There are a number of rsync based utilities in Synaptic, but it looks like all of them require user input as to what you want to backup. Which of the following is best for "backup everything" to an external harddrive: Areca, BackInTime, CloneZilla, DrakSnapshot, Kbackup, LuckyBackup, Mindi, etc. I read http://pclinuxoshelp.com/index.php/Backup_your_%E2%80%9Cjust_right%E2%80%9D_PCLinuxOS, but as the page says, it clearly needs some rework because I still don't know which one is best for my purposes
• I can't rely on a cronjob to start off the backup because this is a laptop that spends ~99% of the time without the external harddrive. Does this mean that some options are better than others?
• Security is not really a concern for me because the backup is just for my own purposes that I plan to keep on a USB harddrive that will never leave the house
• Are there any other considerations I have missed?

Your wisdom is much apprecited

[OldGuy]

I have two op systems on my desktop, my laptop is only PCLinuxOS.  I keep the laptop pretty clean so a mylivecd works just fine.  For the other system which has tons of stuff, I backup to another device using redo backup.

Redo is a standalone Linux CD which can be downloaded from http://redobackup.org/.

It works for me, I use it to backup to an external disk.

Hope this suggestion helps.

[xr200]

I don't use any of the dedicated backup tools.   For me, I just
want a full and exact copy that I could use to restore my system
if needed.  Here's my backup strategy that works for me
(not just in theory, but in practice, I have had to use backups
many times).

First, I have on more than one occasion messed up my
Master Boot Record to the point where I can't boot my laptop.   
I have learned the hard way to backup my working MBR so I can
restore it easily if needed.

as root, I do this to backup my MBR:

   dd if=/dev/sda of=/boot/MBR bs=512 count=1

If I ever need to restore the MBR I can boot up the liveCD,
mount the root partition, and run

   dd of=/dev/sda if=/mnt/boot/MBR bs=512 count=1

No matter what you decide to to about backing up your files, don't
forget about having some easy way to recover your MBR.   
They are not the same thing.

On my laptop, I have 2 PClinuxOS partitions: root and home. 
I have an external USB drive that I use only for backups and
temporary storage.   On that external drive, I created ROOTBACKUP
and HOMEBACKUP partitions of the same size as on my laptop.   
Every so often (and especially before I do a big update like
change the kernel), I connect up the external drive, mount
ROOTBACKUP and HOMEBACKUP, su to root, and use rsync to copy
the the root partition to ROOTBACKUP and home partition
to HOMEBACKUP like this:

   rsync --delete -aHAXhxv / /mnt/ROOTBACKUP
   rsync --delete -aHAXhxv /home/ /mnt/HOMEBACKUP

This makes an exact complete copy of my entire root (which includes the
/boot/MBR file created above) and entire home partitions.  I know I'm
copying over some files that don't matter, but I don't care.    I don't
want to have to decide what is important and what may not be important.
I've got more space on my external drive than I could ever use, and
I am  perfectly happy to wait a few more seconds or minutes copying files
that I probably don't need to copy.  I sleep well knowing I have a
complete and exact copy of a working system that I could use to restore
my laptop to exactly what it was before if I need to.

The first time you run it the rsync-s they take a while because every file
is copied.  But in subsequent uses, only the changed files are processed
so they are really quick, no more than a few minutes.


xr200

[frazelle09]

xr200 - What rsync would you use to put those root and /home partitions on another disk?

Have a wonderful morning! 

[xr200]

I don't think /usr/bin/rsync is the answer you are looking for, so I'm not
sure what you're really asking.   Please elaborate if you still have a question.
xr200

[7272andy]

I've always used a Parted Magic live cd to backup my system (it contains both Partition Image and CloneZilla), never had any problems with these tools.

Regards

[Phil]

I backup my system with clonezilla, and /home and /data via rsync.

System - Clonezilla /dev/sda1 to an image once a month or when there is a large synaptic update. I keep maybe 2 images of each system I back up. Recovery is ok, expert mode with do not touch the MBR. recovery is a five minute job.

Backup files twice a week to a separate disk, sda > sdb. Done via a cron jub so I do not need to remember.

Extract of backup file which is run from a cron job as root:

Code: [Select]

mount -t ext4 /dev/sdb1 /storage/a

rsync --archive --delete /home /storage/a/
rsync --archive --delete /datb/philip /storage/a/philipsdata

umount /dev/sdb1


CARE - watch your slashes with the source directory.

rsync options source/ dest

source/ means the contents of source
source means the entire source directory

rsync only copies over changes so once its done the next time is fast.

My files are not compressed as I do not think rsync will do that and tar.bz would copy everything over rather than just the changes.
Strategy works for me. Several front ends.

[frazelle09]

System - Clonezilla /dev/sda1 to an image once a month or when there is a large synaptic update. I keep maybe 2 images of each system I back up. Recovery is ok, expert mode with do not touch the MBR. recovery is a five minute job.

This one looks good. i, too, have had problems and have only once been successful getting MyliveCD to work and am getting a little tired of haveing to reinstall all my / .  i also have a script which is just a line in Terminal that i don't erase which uses rsync.  i use it from my laptop which i use about once a week in the same house as the big computer, so it syncs my /home and .thunderbird.

Have a great morning! 

[Yankee]

I am looking for a backup strategy for my laptop.

Here's a few more :

syncBackup - in the repo, a little gui for rsync

partedImage - full hard backup but only works on ext3 and xfs
                                So, my new installs are going to be xfs.

file-roller or Peazip - tar zip your /home, foolproof

Qt-fsarchiver - in the repo too, flexible, kinda like ActiveDiskImage/DOS for Windnose.
                                Will backup the whole system.


regards,

FF