Backup options
 

I am trying to backup my system, but I'm running into a few difficulties with the methods I've looked into. I'd like to get a backup of my whole HD (8 gig NTFS windows partition, 22 gig linux partition, and 2 gig vfat partition). I've looked into partimage, but even if I move all the files on the vfat partition to the linux one, there still won't be enough room to save an image there. I don't want to try to write to NTFS (if that's even possible), and saving over the network isn't going to work since no one here has a linux box or windows with vfat instead of NTFS. What options are available to me? There has to be a way to get a backup without spending hundreds (thousands?) of dollars on a tape drive or something like that. Thanks in advance.

Maybe something here will help. Never used any, so don't
know how good are they. I used a CD Writer and burn onto
a CD-R.

Backup - HowTo
http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/ (rsync)
http://kmself.home.netcom.com/Linux/FAQs/backups.html (Linux Backups mini-FAQ)
http://www.rosslaird.info/archives/2...ckup_for_writ/ (rsync)
http://madpenguin.org/Article1505.html (ssh)
http://www.tpci.com/linux_backup_software.htm (Linux Backup Softwares)

Backups
http://www.rsnapshot.org (non-commercial; rsnapshot)
http://www.partimage.org/ (non-commercial; Partition Image)
http://cdtar.sourceforge.net/ (non-commercial; cdtar)
http://www.lyra.org/sitecopy/ (non-commercial; xsitecopy)

Sheng-Chieh

Those look like very useful links and I learned quite a bit just skimming them. Considering what was mentioned there, I should probably clarify what I'm trying to backup.

Later on I'll consider doing partial backups of things like /etc so that if something gets accidentally deleted or I need to look at past copies of a file they will be available. However, what I'd like to do now is create an image of the entire system so that, theoretically, I could experience a hardware failure in this drive, get a new one, partition it as I did before, and restore these images to get a running system again.

The main reason I want to do this now is because I'm going to try to upgrade from Slack 9.1 to 10, and I don't trust myself upgrading so many individual packages, changing config files, dealing with new things like Xorg, etc. without the chance to go back to a previous snapshot if I end up trashing the system. I might be a little overly paranoid or retaining a windows mindset (if you mess it up, wipe it all out and start over), but it's always good to be extra cautious I think.

So let's restrict the question a bit... how can I make a ghost/image of entire partitions (I assume onto multiple CDs) in my current situation?