Hi George - I have a quick TimeShift question. CloneZilla won't run on my new Dell laptops. I'm OK with generating an image BU w/TimeShift. If a machine won't boot, how do you go about reloading the HD?

CloneZilla has a boot disk which loads a kernel and allows the image to be copied back to the HD. It seems to reload a TS backup you need to have TS running. Which wouldn't be possible on a dead laptop. Just curious as I know you've used the utility.

Also does the image backup from TimeShift require a dedicated storage device? Or does it just create a large folder or file collection? I'd like to save the backup to my Pass Port drive but don't want to wipe it out if TimeShift tries to create a master boot record. Many thanks.

After TimeShift runs for the first time and takes its first snapshot, you can enable automatic system snapshots at regular intervals from the Settings window.

TimeShift snapshots are saved by default on the system's root partition in /timeshift. Other partitions can be selected if you wish, including saving snapshots to an external (non-system) partition - which in my view is preferable.

Then, if your machine fails to boot for any reason, you can fix whatever the problem happens to be, install a fresh OS, activate TimeShift and 'restore' one of the backed up snapshots you've saved from the external partition you saved them on.

George - Thanks for the information. That's what I expected but confirmation is good. CloneZilla installs a Linux kernel which probably takes about the same time as loading a fresh boot disk, installing TimeShift then restoring the system. I'll opt for a clean 64Gb MicroSD card for the target. Formatted to EXT4 prior. I understand about incremental backups. The first time is going to be slow.

CloneZilla doesn't like the new hardware and issues too many warnings which doesn't inspire confidence. I've used it on my old Dells and two Windows 2000 workstations. Thanks and take care.

George - Formatted a MicroSD card and did created an image. Took about 5 minutes total. Seemed to go well and I have a TimeShift folder now. I can't test the restore until I get the other machine freed up. Still working on installing applications, configuring and getting data files moved over.

All I've used TimeShift for is to restore a somehow borked operating system to full functionality on an otherwise operational machine, never to do a fresh installation and put a preferred OS setup in place. According to what I've read, the procedure outlined above 'should' work. However I've never tested it first hand, so I can't vouch for any of it personally.

If I have to do a fresh installation for whatever reason, typically I will backup my home directory then put it back into place once the new OS is up and running. Without the preferred home directory in place I don't see how a TimeShift snapshot would have the desired effect. ..But again, I haven't done this myself so it'll be interesting to see what you come up with..

I dealt with changing the default options which exclude some files I'l like backed up. I'm currently well under my 64Gb drive size. So I backed up the whole ball of wax. Also shut down the scheduler so I run the backups manually whenever. Having TimeShift scheduler active is good for backups sent to the HD. It messes up the volume mounting/unmounting for removable storage. Setting for manual backups fixes that issue. I'll test a full system restore as I have two identical laptops. I'd like to make a complete copy of the one configured laptop to the other one. Let me play a bit and I'll report back on what happens. I just want to make sure I have all the data (on older laptop) moved over before I overlay its HD. And that all the new application installs are working. So far so good.

Sounds good to this point. If you're as successful as I hope you'll be we'll know that TimeShift properly configured will do everything we need it to, not just revert a working system to an earlier snapshot when something goes wrong - which I've used TimeShift for a couple of times when software and/or configuration issues created problems ..

George - OK, I'm on the restored system which was totally replaced via a TimeShift backup restored from the target system. You'll need to set a few options like selecting the device you'll be restoring to. The advanced boot options I left as defaults. Select the source device, turn off schedules and make sure all files are selected in USER. Hit restore. The screen goes black then line items display hundreds of thousands of files as it rebuilds the system. It deals with the GRUB boot loader last, then reboots the system. So initially it all looks fine. I need to run applications now and see what happens. I'd say this took about 5 minutes. I'm about 6 Gbs in size which is small. Updates to follow.

So how did your applications run? Anything needing reinstallation to get it going?..

George - So far everything is running perfectly. The source laptop cloned perfectly over to the target. Both laptops are identical so this is a good test for TimeShift. I'm just getting ready to install VB and K3B so I'll do another BU before that. The TimeShift file is owned by the root. So I deal with permissions to delete the folder and build a new one from scratch. I'm using a MircoSD card to SD card adapter for the target storage device. My Dell has a female socket for them. 64Gb is way more than I need at the moment. The system has a 250Gb SSD in it. You can do incremental scheduled backups to that drive. But what happens when that drive sh*ts the bed? There are two kinds of drives. Those that have crashed and those that will crash. So having the image on removable storage would avoid losing the BU. TimeShift defaults to excluding your home folder so I've checked the options to save the entire system.

Reports using TimeShift are so far good. I'm using it a bit different for the reasons I've mentioned. It's much more convenient than CloneZilla. I use CloneZilla for my old Windows workstations, however. I already know VB runs fine on this hardware. I setup Jeannie's workstation with VB which went surprisingly well. Did an Import Appliance and got her XP machine back up. I'll report back with updates.