Disaster recovery - what is necessary and sufficient to backup?

Ask Fedora
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There’s also the option to go with a mix:

  • System image (disk image or rather partition images of /, /boot and /boot/efi) after every system upgrade (so no more often than every 6 months), using a live ISO and GNOME Disks for example.
  • Regular data backup with an incremental backup system (e.g. Deja-Dup or Pika) of ~ and /etc/
  • Back up the list of user-installed packages.

When restore needed, the disk/partition images would be the base of a recovery (UUIDs will be preserved)[1]. Afterwards restoring the data, bringing system up to date and reinstalling additional packages.

For my particular setup, I rather reinstall the system from scratch, and only restore my home folder. There are less and less tweaks needed outside of the home folder nowadays[2].

  1. Or just swapping the damaged SSD/NVMe with the backup SSD/NVMe, in case only the disk is damaged, but laptop available and otherwise functional. ↩︎

  2. Those few system settings/tweaks needed can be made base on my notes. ↩︎

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