1 Topic by cw

  • cw
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Topic: using gparted as backup

I am new to linux. I bought a laptop for my son. Installed elementaryOS. It all works fine. I wanted to create a back up of the system on a USB drive that I could use to restore the system if I had a major crash, can't boot, etc....

I formated a USB drive with partitions similar to the computer hard drive and put a live version of gparted one partition, and then copy and pasted two partitions from the hard drive: one that had the whole windows 7 system the came with the computer on it, and one that had the whole of elementaryOS. It seemed like eveything worked. I can boot from the USB stick and if I had a crash I thought I would use gparted on the USB to reformat the computer hard drive and then copy and past the partitions from the USB to the newly reformated hard drive

Will this work? Is there a better way to backup and restore a system?

One thing further thing I am not sure about, when I look at the USB drive from the computer I can see all the partitions except the one that has elementaryOS on it. In gparted it says that it is mounted on / (whatever that means) but the only way I can see that partition and it's contents is to mount it with the terminal.

Does anyone know why this is?

Thanks. As I mentioned above, I am very new to linux.

2 Reply by gedakc

  • gedakc
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Re: using gparted as backup

cw wrote:

Will this work? Is there a better way to backup and restore a system?

Yes this will work.  If you were to restore the partitions to a new drive then one extra step would be needed to restore the boot code.  This is explained in the GParted FAQ and is done by booting from the original GNU/Linux or Windows media.

For a more complete backup that includes the boot code you might investigate making an image copy of the drive.  Some free software for doing this is Clonezilla which is also maintained by Steven Shiau, our GParted Live image maintainer.

There are many more ways of creating backups.  That offer varying degrees of flexibility.  Personally I only backup the data that I create.  That way if I lose a drive I still have to re-install the OS, but can then restore my work to the drive.

cw wrote:

One thing further thing I am not sure about, when I look at the USB drive from the computer I can see all the partitions except the one that has elementaryOS on it. In gparted it says that it is mounted on / (whatever that means) but the only way I can see that partition and it's contents is to mount it with the terminal.

Does anyone know why this is?

In Windows, the file system in a partition is automatically mounted and assigned a drive letter.
In GNU/Linux, you have the option of automatically mounting the file system in a partition, but you do not have too.

If you are copying the contents of a partition, then it should not be in use while performing the copy.  Otherwise changes that occur in the partition while the copy is progressing may or may not be included.  This can result in an inconsistent copy and potential loss of data in the copied partition.

"/" in GNU/Linux represents the root or top level file system.  All other file systems are mounted under "/".   For example if the home file system is in a separate partition then it is often mounted at "/home".  This method of mounting and accessing partitions means that many partitions may be mounted in unique locations.  In Windows since each partition is assigned a drive letter there is a limit in the number of letters in the alphabet.