hello,

is it possible to backup suse (9.1 pro) from one hdd to another? when this hdd crashes, a few hours work will be lost.
it would be a quite simple solution if i put the new hdd (with the suse backup) in the computer and can continue working.

basilogics

install the new disk as secondary master or primary slave, which ever you prefer.
Then you need to partition it the way you want it, if you're dual booting then install windows once the partitions have been made.

boot to a live cd which gives write permissions to the hard disks and mount the old and new disks
to somewhere like: /mnt/old and /mnt/new
then just use:
if your partitions on the new disk are different to the ones on the old, then you'll need to edit /etc/fstab and you boot config(/boot/grub/menu.lst if you're using grub) to reflect the changes.

then you can install the new disk as primary master and all should ok.

"is it possible to backup suse (9.1 pro) from one hdd to another? when this hdd crashes, a few hours work will be lost.
it would be a quite simple solution if i put the new hdd (with the suse backup) in the computer and can continue working."

Yes, it is possible. However don't try to do it by creating disk images with dd. Using dd can cause all kinds of flaky problems which you don't need in a backup/restore scenario. You can use a series of cp commands in a script to copy a working system onto a partition on a seperate hard drive. I do this with the cpbk command which is an archaic program similar to cp. A major advantage to doing it this way is that you can set up the backup to only copy files which have changed, thus cutting down backup time significantly.

In the past I have created a new Linux operating system on a spare drive and then swapped drives to install the new system. About 30 years ago I used to routinely install new OSs that way. But I don't recommend it as a backup/restore method. Instead I recommend that you use cp to create a backup partition on a seperate hard drive. To restore, boot a rescue CD and then copy over enough of the backup system to restore the broken system to working order. If you lose a complete hard drive due to hardware failure you could swap hard drives and then boot a rescue CD to do the work of making the replacement hard drive a working system.

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Steve Stites

ok, thanks. i think i can manage this.

basilogics