[SLUG] Backup

[Gavin Baker]

On 28 Oct 2006, at 10:30, john at johnallsopp.co.uk wrote:


> One rule was, partition your hard drive into partitions the same size
> as your backup medium (DVD in this case, 4.7Gb), so I did that.

It wouldn't be much fun chopping up 1TB of disc into 600MB partitions !


> Now I've 15 partitions and it turns out that's the most I can have. So
> while I might have a 150Gb drive, I'm only using half of it.

Personally, for a 150GB drive, I wouldn't partition it at all. Well,  
I would have a swap partition rather than use a swap file, but  
however you chop it up, chances are you are gonna end up with spare  
space where you don't need it, and a full partition where you do.


> The problem I have now is with backup. The whole idea is that I'm
> supposed to just be able to back up a partition to a DVD drive. That
> worked for the first one which is probably only 13% full, but the
> second complained there wasn't enough room in the partition to make
> the image file. That one's still only 69% full.

If all your partitions are 4.7Gb, then the filesystem on those  
partitions will be quite a bit less than that, so you won't have room  
to create a 4.7Gb iso.


> I'm just using Nautilus for Gnome, Fedora 3.
>
> Is there a better way of writing these partitions to DVD?


Delete one of the partitions, create a new one that has all the  
remaining space on it, write a filesystem to it, mount it, cd into  
it, make the iso image there, burn it.

I would try a regular automated backup utility to backup your  
important stuff; your dot dirs and /etc and any directories you use  
for things you work on.

Maybe a single 4.7GB partition would be useful. Like a 'burn'  
partition, when its full of junk, burn it to dvd and remove the  
contents to start again. You can do this without a real partition  
though, just use dd to create a 4.7GB file, then treat it as a  
partition... put a filesystem on it, mount it...

It really depends on how much of your drive space is being taken up  
by things with value. If you really plan on backing up the entire  
disc, then I would grab an external drive. 500GB external firewire  
drives are less than £150, and are *much* quicker than writing dvds.

I have two external drives, but I don't backup a thing... Your mail  
has made me think about it... again.

Good luck,
Gav