Re: [tlug] RE: Tlug Digest, Vol 14, Issue 23

["Keith Bawden" <keith@??>]

On 2/20/07, Tribble Phillip J SrA 374 LRS/LGRTT
<Phillip.Tribble@??> wrote:
> Does anyone know a good way to backup a hard drive? dd if=/dev/had
> of=/dev/hdc will make a image exactly the size of my hard drive. Is
> there a way to use DVD and make the image small?

This entirely depends on how much data there is to be backed up. A DVD
will hold around 4.7 or so gig. This is likely to short of your needs
even if you compress any image of your backup. An external large disk
*may* be a better option.

Also, decide on what type of backup/restore you want to do. For
example, if you want to do a full server backup that will allow you to
restore from bare metal then you may want to read up about
systemimager[1]. If on the other hand you only want to backup the
contents of your home directory then tar along with gzip (or whatever
you favourite compression tool is) may suffice.

There are many many ways to take backups. I suggest you decide on what
you want to achieve and then go from there. Last point. Test
recovering data from your backups. This is a very important step - if
you fail to validate your backups then they may be useless.

Regards, Keith

[1]  http://wiki.systemimager.org/index.php/Main_Page