17 replies to this topic

[georgeg4]

I am running Ubuntu 10.10 and I want to upgrade and I cant make a backup on the computer because I dont have room on my Hdd and kbackup wont allow me to write it to a dvd I also DL and installed sbackup and I have the same problem with it

Edited by georgeg4, 18 July 2012 - 05:15 PM.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

I doubt you'll be able to get a full backup on a DVD anyway, George. You might want to invest is an external USB hard drive. They come in handy for just this type of thing.

Stand by for advice from others before doing anything drastic, though.

[sunrat]

How big is your intended backup?
I agree with Eric's suggestion, use an external USB drive, either HD or flash. If you want to back up your whole system, boot from Clonezilla Live or Parted Magic live CD, and follow ichase's nice new Clonezilla tutorial.

[georgeg4]

Problem is I dont have the money for an external drive so what I really want to do is just back up my /home so I can reinstall it after the update and if that doesnt work or is not feasible no problem I just invested in an 80 g Hdd for my dell laptop and I am going to make that one all Linux

And Eric that is great advice so I am going to wait

Edited by georgeg4, 18 July 2012 - 10:29 PM.

[securitybreach]

V.T. Eric Layton, on 18 July 2012 - 07:42 PM, said:

I doubt you'll be able to get a full backup on a DVD anyway, George. You might want to invest is an external USB hard drive. They come in handy for just this type of thing.

Agreed!!

[burninbush]

I will add my vote for an external usb harddisk.  I have a Seagate Freeagent 320mb here that I got from newegg for $40, back before the tsunami.  Works like a charm, does 37mB /second transfers, and runs on power it pulls from the usb port.

Anyway ... you might yet be able to backup your system to dvd.  We are talking about a linux filesystem here, right?  Your /home?   You can use tar for that, and do it in sections that will result in filesizes that will fit onto a dvd.  Just keep notes on how to reassemble it when you restore.

#cd /home/root
#tar -czf /backup1.tar .  

then burn that one & delete the /backup1.tar to make room for the next chunk.  That tar command will result in ~ 50% compression, so you can make guesses about how large your chunks should be, to result in a compressed file smaller than 4.3gb.

[sunrat]

If your /home is smaller than 4.3GB, just use Brasero or whatever the standard burning program is in Ubuntu to burn it to DVD as a data disc. No need for a special backup program at all.
USB flash drives are cheap as chips now too. I just looked on BestBuy, and Kingston or SanDisk 16GB are on special for $12.99.

[zlim]

Target has a Lexar 16GB USB stick on sale for $9.99 this week. If you have a Red Card, like I do, then the price is $9.49.

[georgeg4]

Thanks burning bush I will save tht command for later " See below "

Thank you sunrat that is what I did I removed what I could from my /home to reduce it under 4.3 gigs and burned it to dvd with k3b

and thank you zlim but unfortunately the nearest Target to me is almost 80 miles away

[V.T. Eric Layton]

George, I can just barely fit my Slackware main system /home/<user> onto a DVD. If yours is less than 4.7Gig in size, you can copy the data (not a clone of the partition) to a DVD. Once you install your new Ubuntu, paste the /home/<user> data from the DVD you made back onto the new /home partition.

Have you tried upgrading your Ubuntu using the Ubuntu method. You can upgrade one version at a time till you get to the current one. Of course, that would be umm... what? About four upgrades to 12.04? It's feasible, but a clean install would be better, of course.

[georgeg4]

Thanks Eric and everybody but I did the upgrade after I burned my /home on a dvd I found I didnt even need it the upgrade using Ubuntu's update manager kept everything intact , As a matter of fact I can only upgrade to 11.10 since 12.04 has hardware requirements .But just having the backup is helpfull since I wasnt able to do it before at all

P.S. Funny thing though I am able to run the live CD on this machine

Edited by georgeg4, 19 July 2012 - 06:46 PM.

[sunrat]

georgeg4, on 19 July 2012 - 06:44 PM, said:

But just having the backup is helpfull since I wasnt able to do it before at all

Always good, in fact essential, to back up your data.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Yeah... hardware requirements aren't precise. You could probably run 12.04 on that machine. That used to be Bruno's rule of thumb... if the Live CD works, it should work when installed.

[georgeg4]

If that is the case Eric I will try it and I will let you know how it works

[georgeg4]

UPdate Ubuntu 11.10 is up and working on to  12.04

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Cool!

[georgeg4]

Final Update after only 3 updates and about 4 hours I am running 12.04 . Thanks for your advice Eric

[V.T. Eric Layton]

VERY COOL, George. I'm glad to hear all is well.