Timeshift and the Settings
Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2018 4:30 am
Timeshift as many have explained is designed to create a snapshot of the file system only. It isn’t intended to be used to backup your personal files. Backintime or Grsync is a good tool to backup your personal files.
The default setting will select the first partition because if someone lets Mint install itself without setting specific partitions it will install everything on one partition. If you did this type of install I highly recommend using an external drive for your snapshots and do them manually unless you plan to leave the external drive always connected.
If you select a partition scheme like ( root, home,swap) then you would go into Timeshift settings “Location” and select either Home or an external device formatted to EXT4.
ANY other partitions not mounted under /media or /mnt other than home or swap is NOT excluded in the backup process and can make for a HUGE backup.
So in Timeshift settings under Filters you will need to Exclude unwanted partitions and other Hard drives if any.
One further note: If you have a snapshot (Hopefully on an external drive also) and you re-partition your drive, the recovery of your saved snapshot will not work without some tinkering. The UUID's will be different after you make new partitions.
Image below in most cases you will select RSYNC

The next image you will select the frequency of your snapshots and how many to keep. You can assume they will be 10 GB per snapshot (probably less) on versions 18.x and 14 GB on versions 19.x. My latest snapshot on 19.3 was 20.2GB and can take a bit of room. You really should only need monthly snapshots and keep 2, It doesn't take long to bring a restored snapshot up to date with the Update Manager. If you are limited on your internet plan then I can see more frequent snapshots.

This image I selected sdb1 to save my snapshots to. sdb and sdc are separate hard drives and sda1 is what I am saving which is root.

That is it for the wizard setup. In my install I have two drives mounted under root which is in the system directory and needs to be filtered from the snapshots.

In file manager under File System I have two drives I named backup and storage that were mounted under root, these are the ones that need filtering out.

So in the Settings under filters I added the two drives (backup and storage) to be excluded from the snapshots.

Finally in the main window of Timeshift it shows all your snapshots. The right side of each snapshot you can add comments by DBL Clicking . I chose to keep my original snapshot I did manually with the apps I use installed, from there on it is handled monthly automagically.

The default setting will select the first partition because if someone lets Mint install itself without setting specific partitions it will install everything on one partition. If you did this type of install I highly recommend using an external drive for your snapshots and do them manually unless you plan to leave the external drive always connected.
If you select a partition scheme like ( root, home,swap) then you would go into Timeshift settings “Location” and select either Home or an external device formatted to EXT4.
ANY other partitions not mounted under /media or /mnt other than home or swap is NOT excluded in the backup process and can make for a HUGE backup.
So in Timeshift settings under Filters you will need to Exclude unwanted partitions and other Hard drives if any.
One further note: If you have a snapshot (Hopefully on an external drive also) and you re-partition your drive, the recovery of your saved snapshot will not work without some tinkering. The UUID's will be different after you make new partitions.
Image below in most cases you will select RSYNC

The next image you will select the frequency of your snapshots and how many to keep. You can assume they will be 10 GB per snapshot (probably less) on versions 18.x and 14 GB on versions 19.x. My latest snapshot on 19.3 was 20.2GB and can take a bit of room. You really should only need monthly snapshots and keep 2, It doesn't take long to bring a restored snapshot up to date with the Update Manager. If you are limited on your internet plan then I can see more frequent snapshots.

This image I selected sdb1 to save my snapshots to. sdb and sdc are separate hard drives and sda1 is what I am saving which is root.

That is it for the wizard setup. In my install I have two drives mounted under root which is in the system directory and needs to be filtered from the snapshots.

In file manager under File System I have two drives I named backup and storage that were mounted under root, these are the ones that need filtering out.

So in the Settings under filters I added the two drives (backup and storage) to be excluded from the snapshots.

Finally in the main window of Timeshift it shows all your snapshots. The right side of each snapshot you can add comments by DBL Clicking . I chose to keep my original snapshot I did manually with the apps I use installed, from there on it is handled monthly automagically.
