where can i get a good disk image backup tool for ext3 that is free and will run on linux ? or what is the suggested best method of backup.
Thanks
N
nadeemshafi9 wrote:
> where can i get a good disk image backup tool for ext3 that is free and
partimage
> will run on linux ? or what is the suggested best method of backup.
I generally recommend against disk image backup. Why?
-
It wastes space by backing up installed programs which you have on
your installation medium anyway. The things you DO want to back up
are user data and settings, a.k.a. “productive data”. Depending on
where those are, that’s /home, /etc and /srv -
You may end up backing up malware and restoring it onto your new
system. After discovering a break in, do you really know when the
last good full image before the breakin was? A system should only
be set up from a trusted source, e.g. your verified openSUSE medium. -
In the majority of cases, a restore isn’t needed for disaster
recovery (disk crash), but to recover from a user/software error,
e.g. accidentally deleted/changed file, wanting to go back to an
older document revision etc.
You really want a history of frequent file based backups instead
of infrequent system images if you want to be able to go back to
some point in the past for one file.
Kind regards,
Andreas Stieger.
Although Andreas’ points are valid, I will object for
those cases where rapid bare-metal-restore is essential.
The idea of disk mirroring is not to backup one’s own
data (he is correct in this) but to keep a stable system
image aside in case of catastrophic failures or data loss.
Especially if you have many alien packages installed that
require fine-tuning, reinstalling from scratch lies somewhere between hair-pulling and head-banging. If you
want to use native tools, you can try dd. Lee (oldcpu) has
an excellent how-to on cloning here:
Cloning an old drive to a new drive - openSUSE Forums
and I have used Clonezilla LiveCD to backup to DVD/clone openSUSE from an 80GB disk to a 320GB one. The how-to
is here:
N(.)(.)b’s How-to To Opensuse Total Backup And Bare-metal-restore - openSUSE Forums
Please, if you decide on using this one, since Clonezilla has new and advanced features, probably not covered by the how-to (like -maybe- restoring to a larger disk directly, w/o needing GParted… plus creating a bootable Clonezilla DVD that also holds the backup image), it would be welcomed to let me know, since I would like to revise the how-to accordingly…
Best Regards
JR