Easiest way to backup Amiga OS 4.1u5 AmigaOne

[amigasociety]

I have never backed-up an Amiga before. Happy owner of two NG based AmigaOnes (440ep and X1000) and want to start backing them up.

I have my X1000 booting nicely and want to retain the hard work done to make the system the way I like it.

Do I just connect an external USB drive to my X1000 and drag all contents from main window (showing all items in view mode) to the external USB drive?

If my main drive should ever fail, is there a way to restore a new internal drive to the backed-up contents?

School me on backing up Amiga style.

tj

[davebraco]

I use Backup from OnyxSoft :
http://www.onyxsoft.se/backup.html

Really simple. Read the doc, don't forget to use the clean button before making a backup. Works on 68k too.

[Spectre660]

I use AmiDVD to create .Iso images which I then copy to an external drive. Only disadvantage is that there is no file compression.
Another option for your boot drive is to copy the files to a bootable flashdrive or SDcard or Compact flash card and then make a Rawdisk image of this device.
I use some free Windows programs to make the copy and store it on the Windows machine so I can recreate a bootable Amiga OS device from Windows.You can write this image back to
a hardisk ,Flashdrive, SDCard or Compact flash card.

[AmigaDave]

I am also interested in what would be the best, and/or easiest way to backup my X1000's fresh install that AmigaKit put on it. I am thinking of installing a second SATA hard drive in the system and copying everything over to it, but since I am not familiar with OS4 and it's bootloader file format and partitioning, can someone tell me what I need to do to make the 2nd drive an exact duplicate that is also bootable.

Since it will probably be a while before I load tons of files on this X1000, I am thinking of using a 250gb or 300gb SATA drive in the X1000 and moving the 1TB drive to my G5 PowerMac for video editing, which takes up a lot more space. I also would like to have a CD-R, or DVD-R backup of OS4.1.5 that I can boot from and re-install, should I have a hard drive failure, as the installation on my X1000 now is slightly tweaked by AmigaKit, and I would want to be able to restore it. The "Real" OS4.1.5 CD will be sent to all X1000 owners as soon as AmigaKit receives them from the company that is producing them for Hyperion, but I still would like to have this Restore CD/DVD to bring my X1000 back to the exact setup that AmigaKit provided, since it will be a little different than a clean install from the "Real" OS4.1.5 CD/DVD.

[TheDaddy]

I just drag and drop my AmigaOS (boot partition) to another partition or a CD/DVD/External drive.

[AmigaDave]

Is it as easy as "Drag & Drop" to copy/clone hard drives in OS4.x? That would be great! I know how easy working with AmigaOS3.x is, but I do not know if there are hidden files in OS4.x that I need to know about and I don't know anything about OS4.x bootloader, or which file formats OS4.x supports? I am a true Noob when it comes to OS4.x.

As I probably already wrote earlier in this thread (but don't remember, as it might have been on a different forum site that I wrote what I am thinking at this moment), what I want to do is to replace the 1TB hard drive in my X1000 with a smaller 160gb to 300gb SATA drive that is currently inside my G5 PowerMac. I also want to backup my X1000 to a CD, or DVD disc, before I start loading all kinds of third party software, to use as a restore install disc, just in case I want to go backward to this original install state.

So, does anyone want to offer their advice on what the easiest, or best way to accomplish what I want to do in the above paragraph? Are the steps to prep the new hard drive for OS4.x the same as I remember for OS3.x? What differences do I need to know about and what process do I need to follow to clone my existing 1TB hard drive over to the smaller hard drive?

Most likely, I will get another external USB, or eSATA drive to use as a backup drive for my X1000 and make a new backup each week, or more often, depending on how much work and new files I am putting on my X1000 (more new files = more often backups). Until I have that external hard drive in place to make regular scheduled backups, I will probably use DVD-R discs. Maybe I can do a network backup from my X1000 to a partition on the 1TB hard drive inside my G5 PowerMac, after I move that drive from the X1000 to the G5?

Still not too many suggestions from other OS4 users in this thread for software that they are using to do their own backups. Aren't more of you doing regular backups of your OS4 systems? What software, or backup methods are you using?

[Slayer]

I'd stick with Davebracos recommendation for Backup

This little program is quick and has a simple GUI and it also handles and recreates softlinks correctly, which is important if you intend to install the SDK for example

I just backed up a newly installed BETA boot partition last night with all the updates and the SDK to another partition using JXFS and it took 3mins 22secs, I actually copied it back from there to the boot parition which is SFS2 and it took 1m 55secs

So, it seems JXFS is a faster read than SFS2

I did use cp for a little while since this supports softlinks too but it doesn't support the -S protection flag for script files (cp might be a command from the SDK installation - at work can't recall)

Back in the day I would use tar then Bzip2 to compress it... short answer, go with Backup, it just works out of the box, I did like tars ability to resolve softlinks though eg, it would replace softlinks with the actual files therefore elimnating the problems with a softlink installation but with the disadvantage of a larger installation. Then of course TheDaddy drag and drop option would work fine.

There are some finer settings in the prefs but since I don't require any other considerations I didn't look too closely at it

btw, I did look at cloning a harddrive as in setting up exact partitions and using diskcopy on AOS < 4.x , the process is just way too slow and I don't even think AOS4.x supports this, I'm pretty sure I tried to drag a partition over top of another but it didn't ask me diskcopy to such and such do you want to procedure, I think the screen just flashed and I thought ooook. In short, there is no clone harddrive to file software written for the Amiga and I suppose it's because it's not really needed. Our systems aren't as complicated and embedded nightmareish as the WINZ machines are for example which prides itself on removing the control from the user.

[tonyw]

You don't need to duplicate all the system software on a backup. That is all easily replaced by a reinstall.

What takes time to replace is all your private settings. They are all you have to save and you can save them all on a USB stick or a CD or anywhere you like.

Firstly, there should not be anything but system software installed on your system partition (my opinion only, of course). Don't install OWB or Timberwolf on SYS:, use a separate partition for all your external applications. That leaves the system partition clean for updates and new OS releases every six months.

I maintain, on another partition, a directory called "MyPrefs". MyPrefs contains:
MyPrefs/Devs/Internet/#?
MyPrefs/S/User-startup
MyPrefs/S/Shell/#?
MyPrefs/Prefs/Env-Archive/Sys/#?.prefs
MyPrefs/Kickstart/Kicklayout

That's it. When I have to reinstall the OS, I start with a clean partition, install, then just "Copy all clone MyPrefs/ Sys:". Done.

I only backup software that I've obtained as archives. I just copy it onto a CD-RW. If it's available on line (like all the OS releases), I don't keep copies at home.

[Slayer]

simplistic and advanced at the same time

only thing that would slip through the loop would be programs that save there config files within there individual directories like DirOpus, plus a little hard to troubleshoot if you're not familair with the underlying layers of AmigaDOS

[tonyw]

Not a problem if DirOpus is in its own directory on the applications partition. We were only talking about backing up the system, weren't we?