Just timeshift backups for restore points on the same drive or DejaDub too?

[davo]

Hi,
finance is a bit tight at the moment and I cannot afford to get another drive for my computer.

I have plenty of room on my current drive and have about 40% that I will now devote solely to backups.

I am new to Linux and have been doing a lot of experimenting with it and plan on playing around with Zorin OS a lot more.

Being a Noob that is trying to push the envelope pretty hard this means that I am liable to break my OS.

In fact I have already broken Zorin 16 once after trying to uninstall a MacOS KVM.

Luckily I was able to recover Zorin and reinstall my gnome desktop and now I am back in business again.

But if I had timeshift and already had a previous backup I would not have gone so close to competely losing my install.

So that being said, I am doing backups for one reason only at this stage, and that is to recover a damaged OS.

If I am just restoring a damaged OS do I need to worry about running DejaDub for my home partition?

My understanding is that if an existing Linux OS is recovered then no home folder files would have been lost?

[Aravisian]

Recommend Rescuezilla instead of Timeshift:

File system not right after TimeShift restore Zorin 16 pro

I second that. I have been using Clonezilla which Rescuezilla is based on for over 10 years. It never failed on me. Rescuezilla

Yes, back up often. I am not very different and experiment a lot and have been since I started on Linux using Zorin OS. Back then, I broke Zorin OS a lot. And had to reinstall a lot. Learned the hard way... These days, I am still the mad scientist, but needing to reinstall has become very rare. But back ups help for more than just the entirety of the OS. Files can become damaged, too.
I compress and save my work in Home Folder, manually. It works out better for me, saving space, time and saving from unnecessary bloat.
In the thread I linked above, I also point out the danger of trying to back up root. There are times when you should consider it... But generally, it is best avoided.
I also made a thread on here about restoring after a reinstallation;

[HOW TO] Easily reinstall programs when Reinstalling Zorin

Sometimes, bad things happen even to good people. Maybe it was a power outage or some spilled coffee... But whatever it was, you now must wipe and reinstall Zorin OS. What makes this particularly daunting is all your software you have installed must now be reinstalled. (EDIT: I am removing the script option as some report they work and some report they do not work. Y-PPA-Manager is a lot easier and works every time.) You can use Y PPA Manager GUI tool to back up your current repositories. Ru…

You can get an inexpensive USB stick just for backups, too, using My method instead of Rescuezilla.

[marko94]

I had some issues while using "restore" with rescuezilla.

Restore was successfull , but after first reboot had some issues with folders, paths etc. So after that I used Timeshift backup, which restore all correctly.

So from now, I am using both xD

[davo]

Sorry guys I really need to be a lot clearer about my specific needs which it seems I havent.

I want as close to possible the exact same functionality as system restore on windows.

System Restore on Microsoft Windows creates a restore point on the same drive the Microsoft Operating system is on. This is exactly what I want.

I need to protect my OS from my lack of experience as I experiment with Zorin OS.

If I am experimenting with Windows 10 I just create a system restore point, play around with Windows, if the OS breaks, I just restore Windows 10 back to the last restore point I created.

My understanding is that Timeshift is the closest equivalent on Linux to System Restore on Windows?

And just to reiterate, all backing up is happening on a separate partition on the same drive.

The whole point o what I am trying to do is to protect against operator error, not physical failure of a drive.

The only reason why I mentioned DejaDub is I am not sure whether operator error would be enough of an issue to destroy the home folder

@marko94

I had some issues while using "restore" with rescuezilla.

Restore was successfull , but after first reboot had some issues with folders, paths etc.

Thanks marko94, this is useful info.

@marko94

So after that I used Timeshift backup, which restore all correctly.

That looks like it is definitely the winner.

[marko94]

I still suggest you to use both. And keep backup on separate hard disk or USB

[zabadabadoo]

I use Backups (Déjà Dup) to backup Home folders and files. I assume that is what is meant by DejaDub referred here.

[davo]

@marko94

I still suggest you to use both. And keep backup on separate hard disk or USB

Thanks Marko, I have used timeshift with rsync on a separate btrfs partition on the same drive, I also have another seperate ext4 partition which DejaDub is now backing up to.

@zabadabadoo

I use Backups (Déjà Dup) to backup Home folders and files. I assume that is what is meant by DejaDub referred here.

Yes, if you actually search for Deja in apps, the Backups app shows up, Zorin uses DejaDup as its default Backup software.

I keep spelling it wrong, dont know why