Foxclone - linux image backup, restore & clone

[blueicetwice]

Assuming we are talking a document scanner, you should be able to use it under linux. If you are struggling start a new post. If you have tried and failed, try vuescan. If it won't work with vuescan it won't work. It is not free, but to me worth every penny. You can try it for free. Again a recommendation that has been studiously ignored whenever I have made it in the past.

=========================================================================================

I tried again and failed. I am not wasting my time any more
on what is a convoluted software. viewtopic.php?t=259235
even that thread was no help. I am so done blanking around with vuescan and Buddy Epson.

[AZgl1800]

VueScan does not see this Neat brand Scanner
...
but neither does the LM20.3 Document Scanner

Try gscan2pdf. It is in the software manager.

Got it loaded up, and it does not Activate the little Neat brand scanner, which is USB only.
Neat does not even offer it anymore, I bought it about 15 years ago, it runs under Windows just fine, Win7 in Native Mode, and Win10 In "Win7 Emulation Mode"

I would hate to loose it completely, as it is a sheet feeder scanner, very handy for those occasional tasks to scan in an Invoice for posterity.

As a backup, VueScan and Document Scanner can see and use our WiFi Epson ET-2550 printer and Flatbed scanner

I will send Hammrick an email with a link to my server where I have hosted the Install pkg for the Neat scanner.
If he takes on that task, I will be highly surprised, I am probably the only one in the world still using it.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Assuming we are talking a document scanner, you should be able to use it under linux. If you are struggling start a new post. If you have tried and failed, try vuescan. If it won't work with vuescan it won't work. It is not free, but to me worth every penny. You can try it for free. Again a recommendation that has been studiously ignored whenever I have made it in the past.

=========================================================================================

I tried again and failed. I am not wasting my time any more
on what is a convoluted software. viewtopic.php?t=259235
even that thread was no help. I am so done blanking around with vuescan and Buddy Epson.

I wouldn't say it is convoluted; Complex, yes, but not convoluted. When you stop to consider that this software has to work with multiple platforms on hundreds, if not thousands, of different scanners, it's understandable that Vuescan is going to be complex. It has also been designed for digitizing photos from pints, negatives, and slides. It's no wonder that a program that can do all that and do it well is going to be complex with a learning curve.

The developer has published numerous articles on his website on how to use and set up Vuescan. https://www.hamrick.com/support/ You can also do a search to see if your scanner is supported. https://www.hamrick.com/ Push come to shove, you can also ask the developer directly for help at the bottom of the support page.

[Drugwash]

Maybe this scanner talk could be moved to its own thread or to one of the existing ones? There seem to be at least two other threads about NEAT scanners opened years ago but none offers a working solution.

[AZgl1800]

the brand NEAT is not among those listed at https://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/supported-scanners.html

Not really surprised, it is/was a very unique scanner not offered by any other manufacturer at the time.

The scanner itself as a piece of hardware is pretty darn sturdy, it has survived the occasional staple that was over looked.

[blueicetwice]

Lady Fitzgerald, as Veu supports states, "We will reply with one or two sentences."
This may be of help or not. If it works, it is probably well worth paying for. Lady,
excellent point about having one's backup independent of the PC.

Hear is an excellent missive regarding backup program: https://www.halfgaar.net/backing-up-unix

Can I assume that "Gnome Disk Utility" has too many deficiencies? Or in other
words, a low level of utility

Thank you for all for the input from all posters I have never used "screenshot"
sow much.

[AndyMH]

Hear is an excellent missive regarding backup program: https://www.halfgaar.net/backing-up-unix

That is a very old article, probably dating back to 2007 (he references ext3). Most of it is talking about file level backup, very little on image backup. He talks about DAR, I was using that in 2002, well obsolete now. Most if not all file level backup utilities now use rsync, significantly better than DAR and with front ends like timeshift, backintime, luckybackup a lot easier for the end user. I could make similar comments on image backup.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Lady Fitzgerald, as Veu supports states, "We will reply with one or two sentences."
This may be of help or not. If it works, it is probably well worth paying for.

Hear is an excellent missive regarding backup program: https://www.halfgaar.net/backing-up-unix

Can I assume that "Gnome Disk Utility" has too many deficiencies? Or in other
words, a low level of utility

Thank you for all of the input from all posters I have never used "screenshot"
so much.

Vuescan's developer has always replied to my emails with useful information.

I wasn't especially impressed with Halfgaar's article and disagreed somewhat with what he had to say. First, and I'm just being somewhat pedantic here, his first quote should have read

There are two kinds of people: those who do regular backups and those who never had a hard drive failure, yet — Unknown.

and even that isn't totally accurate. I started making backups before I had my first hard drive failure. Sadly, it is true that a lot of people don't start making backups until they have had a hard drive failure and lost data due to it.

Overall, he overly complicates everything. The more complicated and/or difficult it is to make and update backups, the less likely people are to do them. Once someone has set up their backup scheme, both hardware and software (and that may take a bit of doing), updating backups should be as easy and fast as possible to make it far more likely people will do them.

One statement I especially did not like was

If data protection is important to you, I also highly recommend using RAID.

He does redeem himself partially with his next statement

While RAID offers no protection against fires, earthquakes, data corruption or humans, it does offer protection against failing disks. It has saved me more than once.

Again, he over complicating things. RAIDs 1 on up will protect against disk failure but the primary advantage to using it is actually to ensure continuous operation should a disk fail. If the data has been backed up somewhere other than on the computer, it will be far more likely to be safe.

Most people simply do not need RAID. Most people do not need to ensure continuous operation should a disk fail. RAID costs more for the hardware needed to build a volume the same size as standard volumes that do not have redundancy. This not to say there isn't a use for RAID (or other redundancy schemes) or that one shouldn't have one as long as one understands that RAID in not a backup and that the data in the RAID will still need to be backed up.

The advice to get a UPS is good but he didn't go far enough with it. A UPS is only designed to allow a computer to continue running long enough after a power outage occurs to save any unsaved data and safely shut down the computer. They are not intended to power a computer for long periods of time. For that, you need a sine wave backup generator (a UPS should also generate a sine wave to ensure compatibility to most PSUs nowadays). Unless the UPS has the capability to automatically hibernate a computer should an operator not be present to save data and safely shut down the computer, it will not help for more than very brief outages. Hibernation in Linux can be a bit iffy. I wasn't particularly impressed with what he had to say--more like what he didn't but should have said--about UPSes in his linked article.

He had some gems in the rest of the article but most of it was over complication that can easily be avoided by setting up your Linux system with backups in mind (basically, segregating data from system files) and letting the correct software do the work for you (the whole reason for having computer is to have them do the work for you faster and better than you could do yourself). Also, unlike Halfgaar, I do NOT recommend automated backups, mostly because they require the media the backup is being placed on to be connected and powered up at all times.

[AZgl1800]

Backups?
what is that?

I first started making backups when we had to use an Audio Recorder at 300 baud...

nothing new here, just better technology.

[blueicetwice]

My Lady, you and Andy have a very good handle on software
I on the other hand expose my ignorance.

Ms Fitzgerald, are you suggesting that all backups should
be manual Should the backups be made to an external
medium and as well "back tested."

[Lady Fitzgerald]

My Lady, you and Andy have a very good handle on software
I on the other hand expose my ignorance.

Ms Fitzgerald, are you suggesting that all backups should
be manual Should the backups be made to an external
medium and as well "back tested."

Thanks for the compliment but I have a good handle only on a limited number of subjects; this just happens to be one of them.

Yes, backups should be manual and to external media. The external media should be kept disconnected from the computer and powered down except while updating the backup.

Backups should be tested; how depends on the type of backup, your hardware, and the program used. For example, my laptop uses a separate drive for the OS and programs. That drive is easily removed and replaced. I backup that drive by imaging it once a week with Rescuezilla (it essentially achieves the same thing as Foxclone). Once every two months, I test my latest image by restoring it to another drive, then swapping it out with the drive in my laptop so make sure it will boot and work correctly. I keep three drives in rotation that way. I used to test it weekly, then I reduced it to monthly, and now I just do it only every other month since I never had an image fail to properly restore.

If your computer has only one drive, meaning you would need to keep data files in a separate partition on the same drive with the system, you may may need to make a clone of your drive, then test your images on the system partitions. It will be more difficult if the drive isn't easy to access for swapping.

I backup my data with FreeFileSync; it essentially gives me clones of my data drives onto external backup drives. There is an unofficial "hack" one can make that will direct FreeFileSync to verify each file copy, then report at the end of a session there were any problems. I'm sure there are other ways one could test the accuracy of a data backup but this one is the easiest for me since the software does all the work for me.

[rossdv8]

If your computer has only one drive, meaning you would need to keep data files in a separate partition on the same drive with the system,

An optional method is to have a separate drive for data files. Something I have found useful on quite a few occasions.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

If your computer has only one drive, meaning you would need to keep data files in a separate partition on the same drive with the system,

An optional method is to have a separate drive for data files. Something I have found useful on quite a few occasions.

Yes, separate drives for data are ideal but not all computers can have more than one drive, which is why I said, "If your computer has only one drive." Also, some computers (I'm looking at you, Apple!) make getting inside to add or replace drives a real bugger.

[rossdv8]

Agreed, to some extent.
A number of my computers including this m93p Tiny and all my portables are only designed for a single internal drive.

These days thanks to USB 3 and C being a decent speed, it is relatively straight forward to achieve the data storage on an external device. That also makes rotating our data drives a lot easier (one on the machine and one in the safe) than it was back in the day when we got excited about this new 'hot swap' internal drive bay thing.
It was possible with USB 2, but the speeds for doing video editing on external data drives were pretty awful.

Apple might be the odd one out, although I imagine the people using Apple can run external high speed data drives, should they desire.

[blueicetwice]

Lady Fitzgerald, I am paranoid about breaking my system.
This means I will always keep a cloned copy on another external USB HDD.

With three HDD, I could migrate Manjaro and Solus to the Mint drive
and have an empty 500GB HDD for the backups. In addition, I could
purchase an external USB HDD [2TB] for a second backup.

Is this a good plan or not

For us tech dolts, what files should be backup
https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/backup-dirs

This is dated [2006] but sew am I. It is worth a read, IMHO.
https://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT2280165098.html

[AndyMH]

Personally I would not use clone, I would take an image backup. You cannot boot a clone alongside the main system drive. It is identical to the main drive, same partitions, same UUIDs, confuses BIOS when you boot. Nor can you use the backup drive for anything else, like other backups. I use timeshift and backintime daily saving to my backup drive, foxclone infrequently saving to the backup drive. I have another copy of mint installed on the backup drive so that if the main drive fails or I screw up, I can boot from the backup drive and fix it.

Whether you follow Lady F's backup regime depends on your risk appetite. A backup drive in the laptop won't help if it is stolen. A backup drive stored in the house won't help if the house burns down. Your choice on what is an acceptable level of risk.

[blueicetwice]

If your computer has only one drive, meaning you would need to keep data files in a separate partition on the same drive with the system,

An optional method is to have a separate drive for data files. Something I have found useful on quite a few occasions.

Ross, why only data files

[rossdv8]

In reality, you can have separate drives for operating systems as well, and some of us do.

I have a 'bad habit' of upgrading to a new (usuallybigger) hard drive from time to time, and sticking a SATA to USB cable on the old one. From time to time I decide there's a lot of data in /home that I don;t need to transfer to the new drive. Stuff that I rarely need, but can quickly access by simply plugging an older drive into a USB port.
So I can dig out video or graphics/web design work I did for clients ten or fifteen years ago without hunting through backups - just by grabbing a previous disk.

And that's where the fun starts. One drive that I have plugged in currently to access some graphics that were on a customer's website in 2013, still has Mint 17 KDE on it. And if I boot with that drive left in, it shows up in GRUB (and still boots Mint 17).

For some people, it can be a little confusing having Operating Systems on external drives - especially if you don;t know what you are doing.
It is so easy for the config files in the /home on your main file to get screwed up.

So, while it is quite practical in some ways to have Operating Systems on external drives - it can be messy, though not if you know what you are doing.

For most users, if the computer only has room for a single hard drive, making that hard drive a 1TB with 50 to 100GB for /root (with Mint) and the rest as /home is adequate.

However, If you have a machine where there's an SSD that's only 128GB, and you don;t want to throw that SSD away, a 128GB SSD is about right for Mint in /root (I only like to use about 50% of a small SSD), and I can get a 1TB or 2TB USB 3 hard disk for between $40 and $70 to keep /home on. You might pay a little more, but they are relatively.

Then you just do the Foxclone thing and/or luckybackup to whatever schedule you decide to employ.
This thread has got a little messy, but it has provided plenty of ideas here to choose from.

[AZgl1800]

In my case,
I have the OS on a 40gB partition which is part of a 500gB partition on a 1TB SSD.
/home is on the remainder of a 500gB partition.

the 1TB SSD is divided into two separate partitions, leaving almost 500gB in the 2nd half, that is what is setup as /Backup for me.

Daily Timeshift backups go to /Backup.
weekly /home backups go to an external USB Drive that is not powered up until I need it.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Lady Fitzgerald, I am paranoid about breaking my system.
This means I will always keep a cloned copy on another external USB HDD...

I'm also paranoid about breaking my system and even more so about losing my data. A clone is a way to back it up and is far better than no backup all. However, as AnydMH points out in his latest post here, imaging is superior.

...With three HDD, I could migrate Manjaro and Solus to the Mint drive
and have an empty 500GB HDD for the backups. In addition, I could
purchase an external USB HDD [2TB] for a second backup.

Is this a good plan or not ...

Yes and no. If the empty 500GB HDD remains in the computer and not used externally, it will be redundancy, not a backup (I'll explain the difference in a later post here). The 2TB external USB HDD would be an excellent choice for a backup drive as long as you keep it powered down and disconnected from the computer at all times except while updating the backup.

...For us tech dolts, what files should be backup
https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/backup-dirs ...

Good article although it's aimed at large enterprise computer systems rather than home users. However, instead of selectively backing up various system files, it is much simpler and faster to just backup all system files in an image (data is best backed up separately); also there will be less chance for error resulting in failure. Today's drives are inexpensive enough for the extra capacity needed that storing a few extra files is not a problem.

...This is dated [2006] but sew am I. It is worth a read, IMHO.
https://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT2280165098.html

I'm not as enthused with this article (even though he does make some valid points), mostly because he also recommends automating backups and backing up to internal drives. I do not recommend automating backups because that would require having the destination of the backup to be powered up and connected to the computer at all times, which would make it redundancy, not a backup.