From: invalid@invalid.invalid   
      
   Lawrence D’Oliveiro  writes:   
   > Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:   
   >   
   >> Which means he consider one doesn't have backup. So the first tip   
   >> should be to have backups before considering anything else.   
   >   
   > Speaking of backups, you know as well as I do that they are far too   
   > commonly neglected. Every time a discussion about doing them comes up   
   > in some of these newsgroups, I get the feeling that the very concept   
   > itself seems to be poorly understood by some. Too often, the   
   > suggestion is made that you must make “image” backups, which require   
   > special tools and are cumbersome to restore, instead of just doing   
   > regular file copies which can be managed with standard Linux   
   > file-manipulation tools.   
   >   
   > I think these misconceptions could be coming from Windows users (or   
   > ex-Windows users) who are too accustomed to Windows ways of doing   
   > things ...   
      
   A byte-for-byte full disk backup makes sense if you want to an exact   
   restore of a whole system in a single operation, i.e. without having to   
   redo partitioning and the boot loader. It was particularly relevant when   
   historical boot loaders were installed (at least partially) outside of   
   any partition.   
      
   It’s not a bad bad fit for de-risking upgrades. It’s a reasonable   
   mitigation for storage failure risk too - in the best case, restoring   
   service might be as simple as swapping in the physical backup device and   
   booting from that.   
      
   It’s not the strategy I usually use myself but I’m pretty confident in   
   my ability to deal with whatever a failed upgrade throws at me. Someone   
   who is less experienced at, for example, fixing broken boot loaders   
   might well prefer to revert the system to its exact pre-upgrade state   
   and have a working computer while they think about what to do next.   
      
   --   
   https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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