Upgrading to Ubuntu 20, *how* to back up?

[David Fletcher]

On Sat, 2020-04-25 at 15:09 +0200, Bo Berglund wrote:
> "We recommend that you backup your existing Ubuntu installation before
> you update your computer."
> 
> But nowhere do they mention *HOW* to do the backup!
> 
> It drives me nuts

rsync and tar may be your best friends. You should get to know them.

This time I'm also upgrading my 32 bit server motherboard still running
14.04, to a 64 bit board. It's an industrial board with a soldered down
processor and 12V only power so it's sitting on top of my lab power
supply with a new hdd on the bench next to it, running rsync to copy my
files to the new drive. My audio, video and photo files took nearly 24
hours to copy!

Next are the home directories, then I can install and configure my mail
server stuff, reinstate the user accounts, chown the home directories
and I'll be just about ready to swap in the new hardware and do a little
rewiring.

I learned from painful experience some years ago to never ever trash a
working system. Hard drives are like "dynamite, gunpowder and gasoline",
they're cheap! Buy a new one and install 20.04 to that. You can probably
then stick the old one into a USB dock and use rsync to copy all your
files over. Once you've overwritten what you're running now there's no
going back and there's bound to an oh, CRAP moment when you realise that
a config file, script or something is gone forever, so don't do it. It's
also an opportunity to give your computer a little service by blowing
the dust out of the fans and heatsinks etc. while you have it opened up.

This time around because I know where I can get them cheap (£60) I've
bought two motherboards so I have a spare and can continue to run
another drive with a duplicate of my files on it.

Now, you should probably tell us how many gigabytes you need to back up
then somebody will likely suggest what sort of media you should be
using.

My opinions, your computer.