Want to backup multiple partitions to ext. hard drive. Suggestions?

pritchard92 · 2012-04-25 21:07:37

I'm dual booting Windows 7 and Arch Linux at the moment, and loving it.
Unfortunately, I haven't come across a backup solution which satisfies my needs, while making use of my available hardware.

My laptop hard drive is 500gb, and so is my external hard drive. I'm hoping to find a solution that can back up, or imagine, my entire hard drive to my external hard drive, while hopefully keeping my laptop booted in Linux. I previously used Paragon's Backup and Recovery software, but that required me to boot into Windows, which I find myself using less and less now that my university course has broken up for summer.

Being able to schedule backups would be a bonus.
Any suggestions? I'm really only looking to be able to recover from any hard drive failure in the future, not necessarily mistakenly deleted files (I'm always pretty careful when deleting things).

Thanks,
pritchard92

ewaller · 2012-04-25 22:08:15

Do you want file by file? Look at rsync

Imaging a drive should only be done if it is not mounted. Imaging a live system is fraught with problems.
Invariably, someone here will suggest dd. If (when) they do, be extremely cautious. dd is the most efficient way I have found to inadvertently destroy a file system, or an entire volume, with one simple command. Some say it is an acronym for data destroyer, or for destroy disk. In all fairness, it is an excellent tool that works exactly like it is supposed to. So is a sidearm.

Last edited by ewaller (2012-04-25 22:08:29)

Trilby · 2012-04-25 23:22:14

ewaller wrote:

In all fairness, it is an excellent tool that works exactly like it is supposed to. So is a sidearm.

So is an atomic bomb.

I'd second the recommendation for rsync. I just started using rsync for regular backups and was happily surprised by how quick and easy it was.

pritchard92 · 2012-04-26 13:01:50

Thank you for the recommendations!
I've used rsync before (actually, currently got it aliased as "cp" in my ".zshrc" haha). I agree that it's really great, and had thought about using it in the scenario.

So, in order to use rsync for my current need, that being backing up my entire harddrive from linux, i'd have to mount all partitions, and let rsync loose on my entire / (excluding /dev and /tmp), is that correct?

Also, do you have any recommendations for a udev rule? Maybe not one that automatically kicks off the backup, but maybe one that mounts all other partition that need backup up when my hard drive is plugged in?

Thanks again.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-04-25 21:07:37

Want to backup multiple partitions to ext. hard drive. Suggestions?

#2 2012-04-25 22:08:15

Re: Want to backup multiple partitions to ext. hard drive. Suggestions?

#3 2012-04-25 23:22:14

Re: Want to backup multiple partitions to ext. hard drive. Suggestions?

#4 2012-04-26 13:01:50

Re: Want to backup multiple partitions to ext. hard drive. Suggestions?

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