USB Drive Backup

English Hardware
1

I’m actually looking for a solution to backup my portable computer, but hopefully it will work for my desktop as well.

I’ve been eyeing the cheap portable drives from the likes of Seagate and Western Digital, but their documentation only ever mentions they are for use with Windows or Macs. They never mention Linux. Do any of these devices work under openSUSE? If yes, what additional software is needed?

If these two don’t work with linux, are there any similar drives that will work with openSUSE?

If these are all impossible to use, I might spring for something more than I actually need, like a NAS system. But as far as I’ve read these all have the same lack of information about using them under Linux. So the same questions would be applicable to these.

Any advice would be appreciated.

2

I have not, to this date, seen a single external USB hard drive that does not work on every modern OS - Win/Mac/Lin included.

3

So do you need any kind of driver, or they will be plugged into the USB port and be immediately recognised. Do they need to be formatted? Presumably using openSUSE format?

4

Hi
How much data to backup on the laptop and desktop? Does your laptop have an SSD, maybe spring for an SSD and get a generic USB caddy and re-use the laptop hard drive?

Does you home router have a USB port to connect a usb device to, these can be used as external backup locations generally via smb?

5

Hi
Generally the external USB drives are best fed through a Y cable to not overload your usb port power. If you have USB 3.0 ports then get something that supports USB 3.0.

Drive format, what ever you need, ext4 probably…

6

I’m using a WD “My Book” and a Seagate “Backup Plus”. I alternate between them.

I use them for backup of Windows and opensuse. I have left them as purchased, formatted to NTFS.

7

The only thing that would not work under *Nix/Linux is the windows drivers that came with that external usb drive. ie the auto backup/encryption or whatever drivers that drive came with. maybe under wine rotfl!

8

Ok. I’m pretty sure these will work then. Is there a decent gui backup software I can use with openSUSE?

9

Ok. I purchased the Seagate Backup Plus 1TB. It worked perfectly out of the box using the formatted NTFS. So I’m very happy with it. But I’d still like some recommendation for a good gui backup software for it/openSUSE.

10

I using a external USB/E-SATA dock to be able to use separate SATA disk’s in. Fits me.

For a simple GUI backup I use “Back In Time” witch is easily installed by YaST, search for back… in YaST/software.

regards

11

Hi
Backup what would be the question :wink: Drag and drop from your File Manager for user files?

I have a python app in the Archiving repository called fwbackups, you do need a couple of python packages from devel:languages:python.
http://www.diffingo.com/oss/fwbackups/

12

Note that NTFS does not support Linux permissions so if this is to be primarly a Linux backup reformat it to ext2/4 (no real need for 4) This will preserve the permissions. If not then you need to use some container that knows Linux permissions like tar.

13

OK. Thanks. I hadn’t realized that. So time to reformat the drive.

14

I think you can save your data in backup software. I had 2 of external hard drives die but now I am using backup software (CloudBacko Pro) for saving all of my data. I am really happy with it. It works for Windows, Mac, OS, Linux etc and provides some pretty useful features. Thanks

15

I’m looking at backing up my mother’s openSUSE-13.1 install. As noted in this blog entry https://forums.opensuse.org/entry.php/163-Recovering-a-home-partition-with-fsck-7000km-away recently in the past her /home was corrupted, and her PC would not boot, until I managed to remotely (7200km away) repair it with fsck by my sister using a liveCD boot.

But that has me thinking I may not be so lucky next time - and hence I am trying to figure out how to best backup up, with me 1/3 the world away from her PC.

I plan to buy over the Internet, from a hard-drive supplier in her country, a 1TB external USB hard drive (her PC drive is much smaller, either a 350GB or 500GB) and have the drive shipped to her. She knows enough about cables and devices to be able to plug in the USB external drive on my request. And when her PC is functioning properly, I can remotely take over her desktop with ssh and vnc, even thou I am far away, and then I can make the backup.

The software has me a bit puzzled. There are great suggestions on this thread (above) for backing up /home such as back-in-time… plus one can simply follow the openSUSE backup wiki for /home using tar: https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Home_backup

However the solutions noted do not seem to be so applicable for the entire OS, nor if one is ssh’ing into a remote PC (when it is booting from a liveCD) in order to do the recovery. I surfed a bit on the internet for a different backup app, but I ended up being inudated with many system manager tools, all of which I believe are much more complex than I need - with much configuring needed for these custom tools.

Any simple recommended solutions ?

Again, note it needs to be simple for running remotely on an adoc very occasional basis on a PC that is > 7000km away, and it needs to be possible to run the software remotely from an ssh login (worst case with only a text mode) when the PC is booting from a liveCD … and yet still have the software reasonably simple to run and recover from backup.

16

I am using “dar” for backups. That is fine from the command line.

I did put the opensuse Rescue live CD onto a USB, and installed “dar” there. That way, I could also use if from a live boot as needed.

When backing up a partition, I often use a “–bind” mount, and backup that mount. This avoids backing up mounted file systems (since they do not show in the “–bind” mount).

17

Thanks … interesting.

When you backup up / do you do so when booting to the live USB, or when booting nominally ? I found here some guidance on “dar” : DAR differential backup mini-howto -EN- where to back up the OS they have as an example (running as user root):


dar -m 256 -y -s 600M -D -R / -c `date -I`_data -Z "*.gz" \
   -Z "*.bz2" -Z "*.zip" -Z "*.png" -P home/gradha -P tmp \
   -P mnt -P dev/pts -P proc -P floppy -P burner -P cdrom

they give a good explanation of the above, but I think I still need to study it a bit to better understand it, and to make it applicable to my intended use.

From this I more or less have the idea that one should nominally back up the OS separate from backing up the data in /home.

18

When booting normally.

I did do from a live boot when I was about to completely repartition the hard drive. But I usually don’t want the interruption. Best to backup when the system is quiet. Don’t do it during a update, when the package database is changing. Ordinary user activity shouldn’t be a problem for a root backup. The files being changed are mostly not critical.

Likewise, for a “/home” backup, it is best if user activity is low. I sometimes login as a separate user (an account I setup for administrative use).

I do encrypt the backup (that’s a “dar” option). That’s mostly so when the external drive goes to the drive graveyard, I don’t have to worry about it having sensitive personal data.

19

I’m wonder how the restore from backup would go if using dar ?

Thinking more about dar, I am wondering if after one has restored the OS from dar , if it is necessary to re-install grub into the MBR (assuming not a GPT/UEFI system) ? That could be difficult to do remotely, >7000km away. My assumption is as long as the MBR was not affected by any hard disk damage, one need not have to do such an MBR restoration. But then I think it does mean one can not simply reformat a corrupted / partition (prior to backup restore), but rather needs to possibly conduct an fsck, followed by deleting all contents, prior to restoring from backup ?

20

You need to try it once.

The first time, I was left scratching my head. When writing the backup, it creates file “somename.1.dar”. When restoring, I used “somename.1” in the command, and that gave weird error messages. I eventually worked out that I had to use just “somename”.

Thinking more about dar, I am wondering if after one has restored the OS from dar , if it is necessary to re-install grub into the MBR (assuming not a GPT/UEFI system) ?

I’ve never tried that. Grub2 uses UUIDs. So to avoid a grub2 reinstall, you might need to use the same UUID for the file system containing “/boot”. That means recording it somewhere in a file. And then using “tune2fs” to set the UUID to what you want it. I guess that could be done remotely. I don’t know if there’s an equivalent for “btrfs”.

I would think it safer to have a separate “/boot” as the first partition (physically first) on the disk, and use a “dd” backup of that. You might need to tweak “grub.cfg” (put in the UUID for the root partition). Perhaps “fstab” also needs adjusting.