On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 4:03 AM, John Smith <[email protected]> wrote: >> I have dual boot computer with two hard drives. One drive has a >> Vista install and the other has Debian, Swap and two more partitions. >> >> I installed using aptitude. The program now works and backs up /etc >> to /var/lib/backuppc. I would like to be able to back up Vista using >> MS backup program and also be able to back up Debian with the >> same external HD using backuppc.
John, I am doing this in certain situations, and as people point out it's not what BackupPC is designed for, but it's doable and one way to start the learning curve as you say. I'm sure you're aware that BackupPC requires a *nix filesystem, I believe current Debians default to ext4 which should be fine, as would be ext3. Windoze wants NTFS, and if you're using the built-in system imaging solution, that will create its own directory in the root of whatever partition you point it to. I would advise using whatever drive partitioning tool you're comfortable with (I use a bootable Parted Magic disc) to divide up your external HDD something like (this is an example from something I set up for a client): (empty space A) [extended (30% logical NTFS) (empty spaceB) (30% logical ext3/4) (empty spaceC) ] A is for future primary partitions, perhaps bootable - in my case I've got a GRUB2 standalone boot partition containing various utility ISOs I can boot into, then a couple regular distro boot partitions I backup-restore for testing purposes, one of which is now Ubuntu containing a current BackupPC install - everything but the data. All my BackupPC data is under a "BPC_topdir" folder in the root of the ext3 partition, including the logs and config folders, which are the targets of symlinks back in the Ubuntu install so that BackupPC thinks everything is actually in its default locations, while actually everything it needs is in one self-contained partition. Windows 7 periodically backs up C: drive to a cold-metal restore image to the NTFS partition, while BPC does its magic (much more frequently) keeping all the variable user data backed up, with historic version-control. It doesn't need to be limited to the single W7 host of course, backing up everything across the network is what it's designed for. The drive rotates among the various PCs at the client, allowing both the system images and the data backups to be stored on one external drive. That drive gets cloned occasionally and the copy stored off-site. Works well for that situation - the client didn't want to dedicate a PC to just doing backups, and the imaging side of things works must faster locally than it would over the network - it's e-SATA rather than USB as well. Note that an imaging program like StorageCraft's ShadowProtect (which I recommend) or Acronis will give much more power and flexibility than the built-in Windows backup programs, but at least with the W7 version I've found the latter to be find for basic usage. Hope this helps. . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The demand for IT networking professionals continues to grow, and the demand for specialized networking skills is growing even more rapidly. Take a complimentary Learning@Cisco Self-Assessment and learn about Cisco certifications, training, and career opportunities. http://p.sf.net/sfu/cisco-dev2dev _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list [email protected] List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
