Backup Confusion

I got a 3TB Passport for Christmas, and I'm doing backups and images of all OS's. My question is, how do you tell which is which? So far I've done backups (not images) of Zorin and Ubuntu. When I check on the Passport, all I see is a bunch of these:

/media/michael/709A9E559A9E17A4/duplicity-new-signatures.20170102T213023Z.to.20170102T214426Z.sigtar.gpg,

and there are 59 of these suckers, each with a little page icon to go with it. How can I make some sense out of this? I am ashamed to admit I have never done backup on Linux, so this is completely new to me.

I hope that is not a Seagate drive - things might have changed but they never really supported GNU/Linux! Does Zorin 12 recognise the full 3TB? I understand GNU/Linux should be able to do this now. My advice to you is that you have 2 options:

1. Use 'redobackup' for a complete drive backup; and/or

2. Create a new folder on the external drive and let's name it 'Backup of Zorin 12'
a. go to your '/home' folder, press Ctrl+ H but only if no '.' files are showing - doing this now might hide them! Once you can see all files in your /home folder, select all and copy and paste into the newly created 'Backup of Zorin12'.

http://redobackup.org/

Thanks Swarf, I will see what I can do. It is a Seagate, fortunately it does recognize the 3TB drive. I would never have bought a drive that large. My wife is like that, always getting way more than she needs.

BTW, I do have Redo. That sounds weird...

Looks like the App/Drive is using a date and time from start to finish for each backup it is doing. 59 and Xmas was only a few days ago, maybe splitting the file into smaller chunks.
Do you get the option to name the file/backup before it runs? Example Z12_before_Installing_XYZapp

MBMz10, I don't think it gave me the option to name it. I was on the lookout for it, but it never came. At this point, I plan to erase what is on the drive, and follow Sawrf's advice on how to do the backups. And naming each one will be a part of that, which will make things a lot simpler, hopefully.

Okay , here's what I've decided to do: Rather than try to make the Passport work with both Windows and Linux, I have split it into two partitions. (I tried formatting it as exfat, but ran into problems). So, I formatted one of the partitions as ext3, for Linux. The other I formatted NTFS for Windows. Then I tried Swarf's method of backing up Zorin. But the ext3 partition would not open. Was it a mistake to format it as ext3?

I'm going to fool with the Windows partition now and see if that one works ok.

You should make it 'ext4' as that is what Zorin uses.

Or it's that Seagate issue I mentioned earlier!

Ah, so I should have used ext4. OK, I'll give that a shot.
The good news is I got the Windows backup to work. Had to download WD's Smart Software as Windows Backup kept failing (what else is new). But the WD software worked.

I reformatted to ext4, but now there is another problem: when I try to open the ext4 volume, I can't create a new folder. When I try to do that, I get the message: Empty Folder. If I right click, the "create new folder" is grayed-out. So there's something wrong with this volume.

Just create a separate NTFS partition and backup your home folder and use redo backup.

Swarf, are you saying I should reformat the Linux partition as NTFS? Or make a third partition altogether?

BTW, what happened to Wolfman? You seem to be carrying the entire load lately.

Edit: I did the NTFS format. and now can create folders. I will now attempt to backup my Zorin Core install.

Edit 2: Success, all three Linux installs backed up. Now just need to make system images.

I did make a separate NTFS partition. I backed up my three GNU/Linux distros there. For some reason, Redo did not recognize the partition. I'm going to try again, but if it's a no go, I plan to move them to the "Windows" partition,as there's little point in having one partition with almost everything on it, and one with almost nothing on it (the backups are very small). I'm not sure I even need to make images, as re-installation is easy, and I can just migrate my files. But I will if I can, as I could then more easily put them (the OS's) on a new hard drive.

Well, I managed to do an image with Redo. I'm wondering, what should that look like on my Passport? Because I've got like 10 different icons there for that image. Shouldn't there just be one, like in Windows? I did have a lot of confusion doing this, with a lot of false starts, so there could be more than one result.

Really, I don't think making an image of Linux is worth it, when installation is so easy. Any opinions on that?

mdiemer wrote:Well, I managed to do an image with Redo. I'm wondering, what should that look like on my Passport? Because I've got like 10 different icons there for that image. Shouldn't there just be one, like in Windows? I did have a lot of confusion doing this, with a lot of false starts, so there could be more than one result.

Really, I don't think making an image of Linux is worth it, when installation is so easy. Any opinions on that?

From recollection when I backed up windows I think there was a main file and a few ancillary ones but need to check when able as it was a works pc and a works external hard drive when we had a change over of managed services. For me, just backing up the /home folder with all hidden files and folders showing is enough - but remember, the amount of time saved of having to go through the rigmarole of all those updates after a fresh install!

True about the updates and time saved. But that may be offset by having a fresh, clean install. And you can also choose what programs to install, right? Or does a backup include programs? Even then, you could choose only the ones you want.

In respect of redobackup I am not sure it drills down as far as that - that was one thing you could do (think but not sure) in Acronis.

I decided I don't need images. I moved the Linux backups to the "Windows" drive, deleted the "Linux" drive, and extended the "Windows" drive, ans renamed it "My Passport." So now I just have one big 3TB drive (what will I ever do with all that space? rent it out to someone?), with backups/images of both. And then I could delete all the images I had on my 500GB external drive, which only had 18GB free. Now it's only half full. I'm breathing easy now!