backup system before upgrade

[David Fletcher]

On Fri, 2011-10-14 at 10:52 -0500, Default User wrote:
> Hello.  
> 
> What is the best way to do a full system backup of Ubuntu 11.4, in
> preparation for upgrading to Ubuntu 11.10?  11.4 is just a single
> partition (plus a swap partition, of course).  I want to back the main
> partition up to another partition on the same hard drive.  
> 
> One way would be to boot the 11.10 live cd and then use the DD utility
> from there, but wouldn't a single disk error mean the backup is
> useless?  
> 
> Is there a better way?  What are others doing to backup prior to
> upgrading?  
> 
> 
I have always used a tar archive and found it to be perfectly adequate
for me. Whatever you do, ALWAYS verify that the backup (copied back from
the flash drive or whatever you choose to store it on) is good by
unpacking it to a test directory/machine before reformatting the hard
drive, or even better just get a new hard drive and keep the other one
back until confident that everything is OK. Hard drives are ridiculously
cheap these days, years of data isn't.

Dave