How Do I back up to External Hard Drive?

[blackpig]

I have an external hard drive (the same size as my "c" drive) on which I have installed a complete running version of PCLO,
what is the easiest way to back up my main drive to the external HD?

[T6]

it depends on what you want to backup

the installation, your personal files or everything?

usually when you need to do a backup of the installation mylivecd is a app that will create a livecd with your configs and apps you have there and afik you can choose to add or not other files but this will affect the size of the iso

if you want to do a backup of your personal files sometimes is just copy and paste the files or folders you want from the hard disk to the external storage or use a specific app doing this for you, there is one in pclinux control center and other more in the repos but never tried them

if you want to backup everything there is apps capable of do this but i never used them really, only did some experiments with clonezilla livecd but never tried to restore, the installation never failed 

[Rudge]

I always just copy and paste my /home folder to the backup media. Then, if I need to restore, I pick and choose what I want restored.  

[CJ]

Have a look at Lucky Backup (in the repos). It is really easy to configure, but quite flexible, and it does 1-1 copies just fine.
Of course, you need to be careful with 'live' backup, i.e. files that are locked as in use will normally be skipped. Example: copying the .thunderbird directory to backup with Thunderbird running causes problems, I have found.

Cheers!
CJ

[everge48]

what is the easiest way to back up my main drive to the external HD?

If the destination drive is the same size or bigger Clonezilla Live CD is very easy.

http://clonezilla.org/

http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live/doc/

[blarney]

I use rsync to backup my /home directory to an external HD. It has the advantage of only backing up the changes to files after the initial backup. Its commandline but not really that difficult once you know the switches and/or create simple scripts to automate it.

For an overview:-

http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/storage/8200-back-up-like-an-expert-with-rsync

Some example simple scripts:-

http://www.insidesocal.com/click/2009/06/my-simple-rsync-backup-scripts.html

In the repos is something called grsync which is a gui version of rsync with a smaller subset of switches. I havent tried this...

Cheers,

Blarney

[uncleV]

If I am to backup my data (not the system) I prefer simple copying by CLI in terminal because it's faster and less resources-hunger.

I don't need a backup of the system itself - just new install

[blackpig]

Many thanks for the replies folks, working my way through them.