From Newsgroup: alt.privacy.anon-server
On 4/26/26 5:08 PM, Nomen Nescio wrote:
There are many simple and easy options to backup and restore Windows.
Very few exist for Linux.
The instructions for backing up and restoring Linux are also stinkers.
They don't work the same for every version.
As I see it, they both have problems, and the most basic problems are similar.
In both cases, it is recommended to always have a full backup of the
system on hand before you do any maintenance. That is a fairly good recommendation, except that many of us have systems with a terabyte or
more storage, and it takes a good long time and a somewhat expensive
amount of storage to close that much before you run the regularly
scheduled system update (Windows Update or DNF upgrade).
Of course, most of that storage is not "system", but "user data", which
should not be in the same filesystem as "system" files, but in both
cases, the "simple installation" procedure has no provisions to
facilitate such separation.
Once you have achieved such a setup, with at least three partitions ("EFI","root", "home"), you only do the "clone" backup for the
"EFI" and "root" parts, and then you can do "smart" backups for the user
data.
And when you are at that level of sophistication, Linux is MUCH simpler
to work with. Windows has a prediliction for hiding important files and features from the user/operator. One of the worst is the "recovery"
partition, which is well hidden, and can easily get corrupted.
Another is the various "Application Data" folders, where lots of things, including your email are stored, but which the "File Explorer" is
normally prevented from browsing.
In Linux, you can see all of these things.
For my own part, I have a USB-attached external backup drive that is
about twice as large as my "useful" storage. Overnight, I run an
incremental rsync from each filesystem to the backup drive.
It is set up so that each filesystem has a top level folder named for
the date, under which the whole tree appears, but files that are
unchanged from the day before are a hard link to the file from
yesterday. This is essentially the same as Apple's "Time Machine" backup.
So for my 4TB partition set (with, say 3TB used), the first nightly
backup uses 3TB, but each subsequent daily backup usually uses 3-4GB,
so a 6TB backup drive can go for up to 3 years before it fills up.
--
Lars Poulsen - an old geek in Santa Barbara, California
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