Hi, I've finished getting debian just the way I want it after dumping windows and making it my sole OS after installing the text only system and building it up. I really don't want to do it all again (yet ). I want to back it up and be able to restore it if anything goes wrong while I'm tinkering around with it/learning. Can anyone help me out with this?

Thanks,

James.

I use fsarchiver from within another running instance of GNU/Linux. You can create a Live Debian CD/DVD and make your backups from there. Another possibility is partimage which can archive whole partitions. However, the restore partitions must be equal to or bigger than the original partition for it to work while fsarchiver is not limited by that.


To save the partition in /dev/sda8 using the file sda8_10.02.12.fsa:
To restore the saved partition:
The restore partition must NOT be mounted. All commands must be performed by root.

Thanks for the reply. This might sound like a stupid question, but what will that back up exactly?

It will backup the entire contents of the indicated partition /dev/sda8 in my example. To learn more about fsarchiver and partimage, there are many online documents and you can also consult the manpages, although for a biginner this may appear challenging.

FSArchiver - http://www.fsarchiver.org/Main_Page

Clonezilla - http://clonezilla.org/

BackupAndRecovery - Debian Wiki - http://wiki.debian.org/BackupAndRecovery