Todd Cary wrote:
> If I were to lose my main hard drive, I would like to have the
> opportunity to do the same as I can do using Windows: restore from my
> USB and have a working system.
>
> If I were to rsync everything on the main drive (excluding the backup
> drive, of course and a few other directories) to my USB drive, could I
> restore using some CD based version of Linux e.g. Knoppix?
I tend to use dump / restore for full filesystem backups. Probably
something I got in the habit of doing when I was administrating Solaris
systems (where its ufsdump, ufsrestore)
init 1
umount /boot /var /home
dump 0uzf /mnt/root.dump.z /
dump 0uzf /mnt/boot.dump.z /boot
dump 0uzf /mnt/var.dump.z /var
dump 0uzf /mnt/home.dump.z /home
...
to restore, boot a live or rescue CD, partition the new drive, mount
the media with the dumps, and...
mkfs /dev/sda2 && mount /dev/sda2 /new
cd /new && restore rvf /mnt/root.dump.z
mkfs /dev/sda1 && mount /dev/sda1 /new/boot
cd /new/boot && restore rvf /mnt/boot.dump.z
mkfs /dev/sda3 && mount /dev/sda3 /new/var
cd /new/var && restore rvf /mnt/var.dump.z
etc. you also need to ensure the master boot record and partition boot
record are properly setup on the drive.