Backup apparently didn't

After far too many re-installs of Zorin 16 Pro do to some weird failure to start, I set aside a 50GB partition on my second HD just for backups, and scheduled it to run every day. So when I just did a reinstall for a Zorin that wouldn't start, i figured "Ah hah!!! No starting from scratch me!!!"

Imagine my surprise after a SUCCESSFUL restore to find that NONE of my downloaded apps, or desktop setting were restored!!!

What WAS I backing up if not my unique system setting?

Why even HAVE a Backup app if it's not going to back up what you need the most?

What did I do wrong? Or what did IT do wrong?
How do I back up this machine so when it won't start, I can just reinstall and restore to get to my last daily backup?

I think it may be fruitful to examine why the machine won't start...

I would recommend using Tony George's Timeshift application, rather than Deja Dup Backups.
It is more consistent and reliable and easy to transfer backups to a new system.

sudo apt install timeshift

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same exact thing happened to me, thought i had fudged a setting somewhere along the way....

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doing this now ! thx for the info :v:

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Just remember if using a different drive to make Timeshift backups to, make sure it is formatted to Ext4 FS or you won't be able to do a restore!

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Thanks. My backup was Ext4.

Glad to know I'm not alone.

Thanks for the tip. I'll check it out,
Of course this means I'll have to install Timeshift before every recovery, which leads me to ask, why doesn't Zorin make it the default.

As to why the machine has issues, it an old Frankensteined HP 4530 i3 that is my bedside computer.
Most of the time my Bluetooth mouse stops working, or it otherwise locks up, requiring me to pull the plug and restart.
It probably mungs some file that was open and crashing, or caching, and *nix is too smart to realize if it was important it should have finished instead of crashing.
Occasionally using the USB drive to boot, and repairing the file system works.
But this time it didn't.

Timeshift is the GNU/Linux equivalent of System Restore. You may also wish to consider making a complete system backup after a fresh install using rescuezilla (https://rescuezilla.com/) and then just use Timeshift for snapshots - you can manually configure the number of snapshots to take in a day or whatever period you like. I mentioned that it has to be Ext4 because I decided I would copy my Timeshift snapshots from a failing drive to my latest external hard drive only to find I could not access them as I copied straight to the native NTFS of the WD 4 TB Passport drive!

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Timeshift doesn't support ntfs. But I have mounted 2 NTFS partitions inside my system device. Then scheduled the full backup to system device. Which is ext4. Does it mean the data inside ntfs partitions can be backup too?

Never tried it.

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