Hi to everybody, wishing you a good we
I am a newbie and therefore often make irreversible mistakes and the result is total reinstallation.
I operate with Ubuntu 14.04 installed on an external HD 1TB USB3 , with 4 partitions . Therefore I have sda for the PC windows XP and a sdb with:

1 ext4 for the root / ( 20GB only 8 utilized)
2 swap for the swap area 5GB
3 ext4 for /home 180GB
4 ntfs 795 GB for storing

For my personal reasons I would like to make an iso ( naturally from live)of partition 1 to save it in partition 4 and restore it (in a simple way, I do not need cdroms and I can make them just in case of crash) to bring back my system to the original status. I am not really concerned about /home.
I hope in your advise and help.
PS Systemback and other systems have given me real problems.More than reluctant to use them, even if iso is time consuming, reinstallation is even more.

The tool to make an ISO file is mkisofs.

You could also use something like clonezilla to make a compressed copy of partition 1, though I am not sure if clonezilla can copy to a local NTFS.

I'm not sure an ISO is the best tool for the job. They're meant for optical media. What if you tried making another partition and just mounting it occasionally and copying all your files over? That's probably what I would do. Then you can get a system running on whatever your distribution's media is, copy from one drive to the other, and chroot and reinstall GRUB.

I do not understand it, but it sounds very interesting. Let me explain what I understood.
I resize the NTFS partition and obtain 20GB which I use as a new partition in ext4. Good! and from there?
I look forward to your answer, I am intrigued!
PS We are talking about copying all files belonging to the root

There is a tool that does what you ask - it's called Systemback:

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/...ng-systemback/

Since you run Buntu 14.04, there's also Pinguybuilder:

http://pinguyos.com/2015/09/pinguy-b...upremix-buntu/

There is a tool that does what you ask - it's called Systemback:

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/...ng-systemback/
Systemback has given me very negative results in the restoring. I will look into the other article and let you know.
Thanks

Both are kernel sensitive. Many of these systems use AUFS and this is not available by default in newer kernels, I think overlayfs is the standard now. I boot into my 3.13 stock kernel when I want to back up the system...

Yes, you get the gist. The only thing I would worry about is copying your root partition without copying the contents of your home partition. Then again, I suppose you could write a script that collects all folder names in the root directory, cuts /home out, and copies them recursively. Unfortunately, my script writing skills are hardly existent, so I hope someone could chime in on that one. Otherwise, I'll see what I could do (although then someone will probably show me up with a one-liner for the job.)

Thanks, very clear.