At 06:07 AM 7/12/2002, Keith Watson wrote:
When making significant changes to an existing system (e.g. kernel builds or major software changes), what backup* strategies do you adopt to protect yourself from knackering the whole thing? I know this will depend a lot on what hardware is available but is there a commonly accepted approach?
At the moment I've got enough space on another HD to completely duplicate the whole partition (apart from a small /boot partition the whole of my system is in a single partition). I've been using PartitionMagic to do this but, as it's a Windows app, I'd like to use a GNU/Linux approach. Any ideas?
- 1st time round I typed this as 'buckup', it occurred to me that all I
needed to do was change the first consonant and it would be a better reflection of the entire process. Reminds me of way back when I was submitting batch COBOL compile jobs, the job output listings used to come back headed "System Complication Output". :o)
Regards, Keith
It sounds as though you want to make a one-time partition snapshot.
I've used Symantec Ghost for this purpose. Of course it's a DOS utility, but for the M$-hater in you, it is Caldera DOS. If you've got two drives, then you can run the backup very easily from a bootable floppy.
BTW, I didn't know that Partition Magic would allow you to duplicate a partition. Doesn't it just allow you to copy the partition? Which wouldn't be the same thing as an image.
-- George