How to backup my 10.04 installation (before installing or upgrading)

[sludgeman]

I want to try 11.04 from scratch but Ive been using 10.04 without problems and I´d love to have a perfect backup of the whole system before I try the new one and at the same time, transfer my 10.04 configuration to 11.04 (I did some changes using the terminal and input some "magic words" that I dont remember).

Is there any way to do this, or should I just backup my 10.04 (once you tell me how ) and then upgrade to 11.04?.

Is there a difference between installing 11.04 from scratch or upgrading from 10.04 btw?

Some info: I have 10.04 installed thru windows, so I wonder if I can just copy the wubildr and wubildr.mbr files and the ubuntu directory as a backup. That would solve the backup and upgrade problem, but I still would like to know how to do a proper backup.

[oz]

Hello and welcome aboard!

Clonezilla is a nice imaging tool for making system images of your entire system, or certain drives, or partitions. I personally use FSArchiver to do system archives. Restoring system images or archives only takes a few minutes, depending on the size of your system.

[dbonson]

Unfortunately I don't think clonezilla will find the linux partition in this case as the OP is running Ubuntu under WUBI. The filesystem is mounted as a loopback device referencing a container file on the NTFS (Windows) partition. The default location for this file (as far as I remember) is 'c:\ubuntu\disks\root.disk' You could just make a copy of this file in another location accessible to Windows, attempt your upgrade and if it fails and you'd like to return to your previous state, just copy your backup of root.disk back over to c:\ubuntu\disks replacing the one that exists. You should be able to have multiple WUBI installs on one Windows drive, allowing you to set up a completely seperate fresh install of 11.04 alongside your existing 10.10, selecting which one you want from the Windows boot menu. Not 100% sure about this as I've never tried it but I don't see why not. Hope this helps.

Dustin

[oz]

Unfortunately I don't think clonezilla will find the linux partition in this case as the OP is running Ubuntu under WUBI.

Oops... I missed the wubi bit and know nothing about it at all. Thanks for the heads up.

[sludgeman]

Thanks for the advice, now I know how to do a Wubi backup and a common backup. The only thing left is the option to backup only the changes after the basic install (like extra apps, desktop mods, app passwords, etc, but I m not sure if thats even possible, probably Im just taking a dump outside the toilet here.

Thanks for the help, Ill try the new 11.04 and see this new "Unity".