The backup tool in the live disk is not complete. It's tricky to install all the necessary components to get the backup working properly. You could simpler backup your /home
folder with the cp
command.
You can do this by, first mount your destination backup device (which may already be mounted since it's your /dev/sdb
device.
Create a backup area for your destination and perform one of these two commands:
$ sudo cp -pvau ~/ /mnt/backupdir/
In the preceding command the /mnt/backupdir
is the backup destination directory where you will be backing up your space. It will create a folder by the your username in the /mnt/backupdir
folder.
This space could have been created on a partition off your /dev/sdb
drive.
Alternatively you could backup your whole '/home` folder with this command:
$ sudo cp -pvau /home /mnt/backupdir/
This command would result in a folder called /mnt/backupdir/home
with your personal home folder under there.
The copy arguments are:
p - preserve ownership and time stamps
v - give a verbose output during the process
a - archive (perform a recursive copy of all files and folders)
u - update files that have changed if they already exist in the destination.
You said you were concerned about during something "radical" which could loose your personal data.
Installing or reinstalling Ubuntu will not touch your /home
folder or any other folders that you created on your installed partition unless you specifically elect the format option during the installation process. As long as you don't put a check mark in format your personal data will be preserved.
It's important to always have backups of your important data. But the install process will advise you that your data will be erased and not recoverable if you select to format. Also if you don't checkmark the format option, it'll still advise you which directorys (the system folders) that will be erased and recreated.
/dev/sdb
drive to backup your/home
folder? You said this is where you already store your files on this half-full drive./dev/sdb
. In my/home
folder, I keep two 30GB virtual machine files.