I transferred my main computers operating system to Linux Fedora about 2 years ago from Windows 10. I and had previous experience in 1997 with Red Hat. Recently after updating fedora 28 I got the itch to try another Linux package and decided to try out Linux Mint on a USB as suggested and really like it even more than Fedora. So being a careful guy a I downloaded the Linux backup in software manager and backed up all my files for a few weeks on a separate USB and let it auto up date etc. It seemed to work fine so I decided to switch over from Fedora 28 to Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon 64 bit, version 3.6.6,Kernel 4.10.0-38-generic. Everything works perfect on Mint and I like it a lot better than Windows or Fedora, except I cannot convince Mint backup tool software to restore the Fedora backup files. Ideas anyone I would hate to reload Fedora just to recover my files however i really do need them.

Why don't you open the Fedora partition in Mint's file manager and copy the relevant files across?

In the case where the Fedora partition no longer exists, which package or command did you use to backup the files from Fedora to the USB stick?

Thanks for the quick reply;

I did transfer a few files and when it extracted the file data was not usable. It did give one error message that the archive type is not supported.

The backup software was on the software manager packages that I downloaded. In answer to your second question; a pop up window opens when you open backup appears to be almost identical to the Mint window that gives you the option to backup or restore. When you click on backup then it let you select what folders or files to backup of the following type: Archive (application/gzip)--(duplicity-full.20180609T160927Z.vol2.difftar.gz) and there are 660 of these on the backup USB.

Ok.

Is your Fedora partition still in existence? If so, are the files on the USB stick copies of those files (i.e. all the files are in both places?). If that's so, then you can just copy the originals over from the Fedora partition and I'll show you how to do that.

I'll let you answer those questions before looking at the stick and the data on it.

Probably you used Déjà Dup to make the backup in Fedora, in which case you'll need to install and run Déjà Dup in Mint to read the backup. Déjà Dup is provided by the package deja-dup which can be installed through Mint's software manager.

Please be very careful, as deleting/modifying any one of those 660 backup files might make the entire backup unreadable. I strongly recommend to make a backup of your backup before proceeding.

1 members found this post helpful.

For Hydruga the answer is no, for whatever reason it formatted the hard drive even though I did not tell it do so. The files on the USB are most certainly the ones from Fedora. I don't recall for sure but I did not use deja dup, I used something called backup.

For Snowpine I completely agree which is why I am out here begging for help.

For both, thanks very much for your thoughts: Having said all this I just a few moments ago looked at file manager and a new file folder has shown up under the pseudonym Duplicity xxxxx and the files are readable and this file is under Hardware which I would not have expected. So I will download all 660 files into the backup folder and try again. It may have just taken longer than expected to extract them than I thought it should. INMHO this package should have coverted all this with little fuss but I will start the process and see if this works. By the by I am going to try the deja dup package and see how it does being very careful. Thanks for all your help guys...

Déjà Dup was an educated guess based on the word 'duplicity' in your backup file name. (Déjà Dup is a popular graphical front end for the duplicity backup utility.) Apologies if I guessed wrong. If you don't have any luck with Déjà Dup then you can try a different duplicity front end (or even try running duplicity from the command line if you are feeling brave).

I suspect snowpine is on the money - deja-dup appears first on the F27 software GUI if I search for backup. Probably uses "backup" as the launcher name.

deja-dup may not use the same naming on Mint as on Fedora - that's largely a choice for the distro maintainers to make. I have no idea if that will make things more difficult. Once (only once) I attempted command line recovery of files from duplicity backups probably created from deja-dup. It was an incredibly frustrating experience. Lots of people seem to like duplicity, I swore never to use it again.

1 members found this post helpful.

Snowpine; I think you're on target as well as syg00 and it is duplicity. I don't believe in coincidences so tomorrow during a break I will give that a shot....Thanks everyone, good inputs all. I just didn't want to reload Fedora and start over again.

I will comment that the help, advice and this software, mint, is stellar....

There is no need to do a full re-install of Fedora. Simply use it as a liveCD ("try Fedora") and install the backup again. It will install it "in-RAM", and won't affect the hard-disk. Then pull up the backup tool and do any restores from there. I regularly use liveCDs that way.
When you have your data, reboot Mint.
Easy.

et al;

I downloaded a copy of deja-dup yesterday and that did not work or appear to work; I am guessing it was corrupted so I downloaded another copy this morning and copied all 660 files to the hard drive from the USB, approximately 35 Gigs of data files. Converted all the files and all appear to be in a usable format even the video's. Thanks all for the insights and suggestions, hopefully this will be helpful to someone else. I am very pleased with this mint package and its various software packages are solid as a rock or appear to be so. Maybe in 6 months I will change my mind.

1 members found this post helpful.