I would like to totally back-up a laptop onto an USB so that I can run it on another laptop in its the exact original configuration. I believe this is referred to as a 'mirror', and I should like to know how I go about this.
I am running Cinnamon, latest Mint, on an HP DV9000. There are only a few Gb of data which I can save elsewhere.
My concern is that my primary laptop overheated and failed. Yes, I can recover its hard drive and get back all of my data. However, I am at a loss to understand why it should have overheated in the first place. Again, the latest Mint with Cinnamon face.
If you can help on either of these issues, I would be grateful

Hi

if the laptop can still run a cd drive, I suggest you download and burn UBCD or some other diagnostic cd/dvd
as its pointless installing a new hard drive if your settings or hardware will repeat a failure?

2) modest software tips are run a light DE/WM like LXDE or even smaller ones
look at what services are running and turn as many off as possible

look especially at your power management settings and journal settings.

Laptops are notorious for poor heat dissipation so you can invest in usb fans, mats etc
Heat is the single most likely cause to damage any computer along with dust.
So brush up please on what setting you have enabled or disabled in your bios.
---you may be surprised how many hardwares you can turn off in your bios.
------that is good design.

3) intensive video editting and compiling can lead to high cpu use etc
so see if you can do those tasks on a tower,
or cool your laptop better

I am sure others will offer better advice

4) I would recommend fsarchiver for taking an image of an existing partition that is known to work correctly
but the following may need to be changes or corrected by a live cd
a) /etc/fstab may use UUID and your new drive will differ
consider swapping to /dev/sda1?
b) grub2 uses UUID which will need you to run a live cd
consider running
copy and paste the new UUIDs into grub's cfg file before booting up
on reboot re-check your fstab then run'
update-grub and recheck your grub.cfg before reboot

take an image once its ok

good luck

good luck

Boot to redobackup or clonezilla and clone the installed system to USB hard drive.

This assumes a lot of things to work.

You do have the option to remove the hard drive and put it in a caddy to also clone off.

One could use dd or other tools usually.

Gparted or partimage is useful too.