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Backing up Linux System - FDE
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Backing up Linux System - FDE

Hi All,

Rebuilding the laptop over Christmas with Full Disk Encryption using LUKS, I'm heading in for an exam later this year and my drive will be wiped afterwards, looking for a simple solution to be able to just "image" the drive as is after the reinstall over christmas, then to be able to restore this image on the blanked drive after the exam.

I've considered using DD, but unsure if this is the best solution.

I remember back in the day of Windows backups & restores i've used PING (Part Image Not Ghost) http://ping.windowsdream.com/

Is there something similar for *NIX?

A point to note is that I'm using a 8GB/1TB SSHD and have a spare 1TB external - though don't wish to fill that with the drive that'll only be using ~100GB once built.

Using Debian 8.0 at the moment - Chances are I'll persist using this OS on reinstall too.

Cheers!

Comments

  • If you want to save space you should backup only the data, with fde AFAIK any program for disk backup would take you all the 1TB

  • Clonezilla will do this for you, but as said above it will be a full-size image: http://clonezilla.org/

    Better use an encrypted backup solution in the system and backup only important files. I'm using Duplicity to do just that: http://duplicity.nongnu.org/. Tarsnap is a good choice as well: http://www.tarsnap.com/

  • @eastonch, if I understand you correctly, you want to completely image your drive with compression to another drive?

    If so, you can use these instructions to get it done. (If you are not doing it over the network, you can do it directly to the external drive).

  • So essentially I'm wanting to rebuild over XMAS, however I know I have to rebuild it in a couple of months anyway. So I was hoping to build a "gold image" that I can just zip back to, but yep, looks like with FDE i'll need to either A) Take the 1TB hit and cry myself to sleep. or B) Have it a standard build with /home/* encrypted and just prompt for it on boot.

    Maybe it's just not feasible and I could spend the 12 hours imaging to setup again.

  • I'd take what packages you installed(eg xfreerdp, java, mysql,nginx, or whatever) and write a script for these: apt-get install package1 p2 etc.

    Then get back your main directories, like pictures, projects and such.

    Thanked by 1eastonch
  • +1 for CloneZilla

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