emergency-safing: how to do a full copy of all data on board

[dil_bert]

hello dear comunity


how to make a copy on DVD - want to save all the data

background: my notebook stops every day. i guess that it is likely to quit the job very soon.

what do i need to do to do a full copy

can i do this

a. on comand line with the dd command `?

[requinix]

Simply dd-ing won't work if the disk is still in use. Get a boot disc to run a "live" whatever, then dd inside of that. rsync is also popular.

 

Advice: times change. Copy the files you need personally, copy any particular settings you've made for the system and applications, then wait for it to die. Don't worry about making an image of everything. Reinstall stuff as you need it. It's spring cleaning for your computer.

[dil_bert]

good day dear requinix

 

many many thanks for the reply - glad to hear from you

 

well i thougt that i can use the dd-command. But your ideas are worth to think over.

 

 

my colleague here - in the office told me that i should go the dd-ing way. but your ideas are quiet very interesting.

welll - if i take the external-drive and do a copy with command line  then i can use the dd-command

do you think so? regarding the dd-command

The powerful dd command is  quiet very very  simple - at least to my opinion and i would say it is a pretty efficient command.

i guess that we can say that this command works as following :

    dd if=[input location] of=[output location] conv=sync,noerror

note;    

conv=sync,noerror

will prevent problems from read errors.

we don’t need it, but it sucks to see our backup halt 12 hours in because of a small error on your disk.

that said; The input and output locations can be files, folders, partitions, media, anything.
In our case we  can, for example, make an ISO image of a CD by setting the input as /dev/cdrom and the output as cdcopy.iso.

But wait; we do not want to create a iso.  We want to do a backup!

In our case, we will set the input to the drive to backup and the output to our external drive.
Therefore we have to open a terminal and type our command using the locations from #5:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb conv=sync,noerror

(here we have to (!!!!) make sure  that we have the right locations!!!: note; we want to use a external-drive.

Conclusion: To restore our backup, we can use the dd-command - it is simple and powerful.

Any idea to add?