Best total system AND files backup? [Solved]

[aika]

... sorry your wrong, read what the OP posted! He asked about System AND Files . (entire STATE including data )

Sorry, I didn't pay attention to the title when translating. My document and media files are in separate folders outside the operating system and can easily copied by hand, so why do young people need a backup program for them?

[CharlesV]

Considering some people understand that their data can be FAR more spread out than "My Documents" ( Which frankly isnt even a linux 'thing' ... ) The obvious question is why you think that is ALL you need?

Young or old... you obviously have not crashed a drive or lost enough data to fully realize what is being asked here. ( Maybe it is translation? )

Having spent 35 years of helping people recover from either not backing up, or 'thought they backed up everything' ... I think the OP has a VERY viable question. And reading his intent should be pretty obvious since he is talking about imaging the disk as a possible method to "backup everything".

[aika]

... lost enough data ...

All my personal data fits on a large USB memory stick and my entire OS-MX-Snapshot fits on a small memory stick because it doesn't have Flatpak. That's probably the difference or misunderstanding.

[Eadwine Rose]

I make regular snapshots, although that does nothing, it is just like a picture.

Nice to install from though, saves some work reinstalling things.


Other than that, all important hidden files (program configs and such) get backupped to a different drive, which content in turn gets uploaded to the cloud. That last one saved my butt once in the past.

And of course all important files get stored there as well.

Then .. don't let that storage hardware get too old, speaking from experience on that one as well.



But total system and files? Daily snapshots turned into live usb .

[aika]

... snapshots, although that does nothing, it is just like a picture ...

Why although that does nothing?

My regular OS snapshots with all hidden config files (without private media files) get backupped as live system. This allows me to access my emails in the live system and log in to websites automatically. A new, unchanged MX Linux is useless for me because my MX system has many changes and adjustments like a custom distribution.

[Eadwine Rose]

It does nothing because it does not get updated. If you make a snapshot now, in two weeks things may have changed a LOT, that snapshot is then outdated. That is what I mean with nothing. It is like taking a picture, as I explained. It is a moment in time. Unless you take regular new pictures, as I explained.

[asqwerth]

Here is what I do:

1) Data:
unlike the experience of another poster on a recent thread, I've been very happy using LuckyBackup (preinstalled on MX) to backup my data onto an external drive. This means a backup of the shared Data partition used by all my distros. I've been using Luckybackup for ages, through many releases of MX.
The Data partition contains not just my documents, data, music, etc. , but also my cheatsheet of key commands and other notes, the key configs of the distros, copies of customisation elements like conkies, icons, gtk and plasma themes, wallpaper, etc.

To me, backing up the Data partition is the most important. I have copies in this external drive (usually kept away and unconnected to my PC), and also in NAS storage (often connected to the PC).

2) WHOLE System(s) including /home:
Plural, since I have many distros on my desktop PC. Once in a while, while I'm booted into distro A, I run Gparted and copy the partitions of OTHER distros (because unlike distro A which is in use, their partitions won't be mounted and locked) and paste them onto a different external drive that contains the partition backups of all my distros.

I generally install all my distros with / and /home together in one partition, so it's just one partition per distro to be copied and pasted.

I may not backup all those other distros in one go, just what I have time for, during that session on my PC. I prioritise backing up my rolling distros since they potentially might encounter more problems in an update.

Then when I am booted into another distro (not distro A), I can copy and paste distro A's partition into that external drive with Gparted.

3) System(s), no /home -- Timeshift:
This is only used on my 4 Arch-based distros.

I don't bother to use it on MX because I've not had any issues - ever - that require a rollback. YMMV. In any case if anything were to go wrong, I'll just paste back the partition copy from my external drive. It'll be an older copy, but Debian Stable updates are very minimal and problem-free compared to Arch and other rolling distros.

Other Tools:
I actually have custom grub entries on my PC pointing to the live ISOs of MX, MX workbench and clonezilla saved on another partition. This is in addition to having a live USB MX23 just in case. With these live options, I can run Timeshift to restore back any TImeshift snapshots made, or run other MX repair tools.

I have used clonezilla to make snap shots of my PCLinuxOS, Fedora and Solus installs in the past, but I'm lazy and seldom do it. My view is that if these distros ever die on me and can't be restored using the gparted partition copies, then c'est la vie, I'm not going to bother to reinstall them.


Custom grub entries in /boot/grub/custom.cfg (this file is also backed up in Data partition) :
This is what makes it easy to just copy and paste back a partition copy in to my PC's drives. I don't need to worry about conflicting kernel versions in the grub entries if I paste back an old partition copy with older kernels, because each partition is labelled and my custom.cfg entries point to the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file itself in every labelled partition, instead of specific kernel numbers.

Come to the worst I have my MX live USB and can use the MX rescue grub tools to search for kernels and/or grub.cfg in each partition.

[debianix]

It does nothing because it does not get updated. If you make a snapshot now, in two weeks things may have changed a LOT, that snapshot is then outdated. That is what I mean with nothing. It is like taking a picture, as I explained. It is a moment in time. Unless you take regular new pictures, as I explained.

Well, if I make a snapshot of my system right after installation with all installed packages configurations etc, and these are only applications and preferences that are rarely changed, then, lets say one year later doing a re-install with it, all I have to do is the apt updates and will still save me alot of work setting everything up, doesnt it?
(Talking about a system without any personal data, just packages and preferences changed).

[Eadwine Rose]

It will, yeah.

[DukeComposed]

Well, if I make a snapshot of my system right after installation with all installed packages configurations etc, and these are only applications and preferences that are rarely changed, then, lets say one year later doing a re-install with it, all I have to do is the apt updates and will still save me alot of work setting everything up, doesnt it?

In theory? Yes. You can archive an MX system with MX Snapshot, come back to that snapshot a year later, and pick it up again. In practice, I just booted a copy of mx-23.2_sysVinit-only-respin_x64.iso, released in January 2024. It immediately recognized 236 new updates, weighing in at about 462 MB of data that would need to be re-downloaded if I were to install a new machine with it.

MX-23.3_sysvinit_only_x64.iso was released only about a day or two ago and contains most or all of these updates. It's only been about five months between these two ISOs. A year of updates isn't exactly something to sniff at, especially if you plan on installing your snapshot to multiple machines. I like making a fresh up-to-date snapshot, for installing or just as a rescue live session, every 6-to-8 weeks or so.