I don't HDD backup; backing up files is easier
...and quicker.
About Backup Solutions:
When desaster strikes - and sooner or later it will - its's either no big deal at all, since you have sufficient backups to fall back on, so there may only the need to download, reinstall, and copy back things. Annoying, yes, but no serious problem since no data, no time you spent on config things on, is lost.
Or, if not, it's simply your backup plan ain't sufficient.
Full HDD/SSD/partition backups I did under Windows. There is software for that like
gparted-live, or clonezilla, but
dd does it also, if you just want to backup/restore full drives, and not align/resize partitions.
Pro: From a pure technical point of view they are trivial to set up, easily done, and simply safe everything.
Cons: They safe
everything. Since drives are never full with full drive BUs you'd also backup empty sectors, which does not make much sense. Full drive BUs often take (way) more time as it was practical for regular daily safes, so they cannot be done frequently enough to be really useful for normal production usage, but as part of larger system's modifications, only. If used as only BUs there is the trap your last BU made is very old, and with a restoration you enter the "way back time machine." Months of lost work could be the result.
And that's what needed to be backed up: Your work. All, and only you spent time on.
The system itself is "throw away", 'cause it's easy to reinstall, even quickly done, when your backup-plan covers your system config. Also the hardware is quickly replaceable. But no manufacturer's guarantee covers your paper you're working on for months, that has its deadline tomorrow.
Under a real OS (
) in almost all cases it's to backup the files, and filesystems, maybe the partition tables.
That was the easy part.
Now it will not become really complicated, but it needs a bit effort to answer questions for to analyze the own situation, for to develop an own backup plan:
- what (system(?), config files(!), /etc, /home (of course!), /usr/local/etc (X11 config), data, repos,... /ex-partner-pix, /saved-games,...
- important, less important, unimportant, life depends on it...
- amount (some kB...several TB)
- how often (monthly, weekly, daily,...every second?[zfs snapshots]) (which data changes how often?)
- what's reasonable?
- what needs to be safe from what; own idiocy [#1 reason to restore from backups!], hardware failure [can happen anytime, even on brand new hardware], burning house, nature catastrophy, burglary, malware, hacker attack...
- how long need the backups endure (again: frequency of change)
- where to (additional drive, NAS, flashdrive(?), cloudserver, tape, CD/DVD/BD,...) what's available? what's affordable? what suffices?
- available storage capacity
- available bandwidth (1 kb/s...10 GB/s...?)
- How (cp, rsync, dump,... tar, compress, encryption,... incremental, non-incremental, self written shell scripts, backula,...verification)
- redundancy (1x, 2x, 3x...)
It's pretty obvious: There cannot be given a general answer but "Do backups!" - "do it! do it! do it!" NOW!
Everybody has to develop her own suiting strategy based on the analysis of the very own situation.
Setting up a backup plan is not only part of setting up a system like think of which window manager to use, or install packages, but the most important part.
Check, adapt, improve -
upgrade your backup plan
regulary is part of system's maintenence, any system's administration, no matter how stable or "safe" the system is.
It's even more important than to check for updates, and upgrades for softwarepackages, and less work when you have a good plan.
Anyway, I want to give a general tip, that seems "duh! obvious!" but may be underestimated when desaster striked:
Test the restoration! Really, actually do it!
All backup software, and backup strategies are worthless if you don't know how to get your data back, which ain't so certain to rely on if you never did it.
If the real event occurs you will be anything but cool. So it's better you are at least cool and confident in handling your restoration, to not mess things up even more.
See also:
The FreeBSD HB 20.8 Backup Basics
Backup - Wikipedia
