Hello, I am thinking in performing a format on the DH1 (SYS partition). Is there a standard procedure and/or application which is proposed as a back up solution? Or you just manually copy paste the content(s) of SYS to a different partition and after the back up you transfer the additional files back?

I prefer to use shell command Copy with ALL and CLONE options to make sure everything gets copied and file dates, protection bits, comments etc are preserved for sure. Ambient's copy probably preserves them too (haven't actually checked), but there's a danger that you forgot to copy files without icons or something like that.

For example:
Copy SYS:#? Work:BackupDir/ ALL CLONE QUIET

One exception though, if you have used softlinks, copy command doesn't work with them. For example SDK has some of those. For backuping with them I've used 3rd party programs like BackUp.

Me, I just copy everything via Ambient. It works fine. Just don't forget "show all files" while doing it.

If you want to keep the backup, you can compress it with tar like so:

cd SYS:
tar -cJf Data:Backup/Morphos-3.7.tar.xz *

to copy it back

cd SYS:
tar -xJf Data:Backup/Morphos-3.7.tar.xz

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I wouldn't do that, because tar doesn't preserve those file attributes. You'll lose for example s protection bits from SYS:S/ and p protection bits from SYS:MorphOS/C/ etc.

That is right. The s and p flags are lost.
Now that you mention it, I found out, that I had not set them on my MorphOS-partition.
At least the p-flags can be set with hdinstall.fixc

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Yeah, but then you probably also have 3rd party stuff on C: and S: and won't have ready scripts to set them... and maybe somewhere else is similar stuff too.

[ Edited by jPV 08.09.2014 - 12:40 ]

First, performing a copy onto a harddrive inside the same system is hardly a backup. If the power supply fries the entire systems and all harddrives are gone, your backup is gone, too.

I strongly suggest using a firewire drive and the firewire stack "Helios" . This can be a simple external harddrive or some unused mini (or other Mac hardware).

Personally I do not trust USB in any way, as I had issues from vanishing during backup till inserting of bitflips while claiming data is stored properly.

Speaking of a tool to create a backup, "Copy CLONE" is a good solution as mentioned here, however it takes ages to copy several gigabytes everytime you want to backup. This will cause you to get lazy and at the end you do not make any backups again.

There is a solution for this. (Not for your lazyiness, I am sorry!)

MirrorCopy is performing a diff copy from one drive to another. So a simple

MirrorCopy ALL CNT NOSOFT NOHARD FROM SYS: TO Backup:

in Shell, or stored inside an script, will copy your data.

NOTE: Any data on the backup drive gets lost when using this line. Make sure it is empty or copy into a drawer on that drive.

The first run will, like normal Copy, take ages as all data need to be copied.

The second run however will only transfer the changes. e.g. if you just changed some preferences, it will only copy these preferences files and nothing more. Only modified or new files will be copied. File you deleted on your system, will be deleted on backup. At the end you have a 1:1 copy after every backup session.

Instead of transfering 100GB each time, you will be down to a few MB each time you run the mirrorcopy/script. -> Backup done in a few minutes (drive scan takes some time).

Launch the script, get some coffee and once you return the backup is already finished.

MirrorCopy has some additional features to preserve files, but there is a readme explaining all the features of this great tool.

All mentioned drivers and tools are available via Grunch.

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The question was about temprorary backup while formatting one partition and copying some of the files back immediately...

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Hi, what I do in that case is to use Jalapeno to do an ISO which I then copy to an usb key (from the temp directory). Then I boot the computer with the MorphOS CD, mount the ISO and in a Shell do a copy clone all to System: and I have excatly the same as before format

Don't forget Diavolo Backup for MorphOS

But if you want to keep hardlinks and softlinks then you remove the NOSOFT and NOHARD from the line

MirrorCopy ALL CNT NOSOFT NOHARD FROM SYS: TO Backup:

?

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Cool....forgot about that program. I'll check it out!!

Reviving this old thread since I never actually did the back up :P but now the time to move away from my G4 to my newest addition (dual core G5 2.7Ghz) has come, since today I will be registering it.

Both of my current Work (75GB) and SYS partitions (5GB) are heavily modified and full of programs (which I refuse to start installing again from scratch after halfa decade of setups! :)). G4 is connected properly to an external Seagate NAS (NTFS format) - I also have a NEC usb 2.0 card but it falls when copying large amount of data, so copying via USB is out of question. Also, I don't want to mess with hardware deviations such as IDe to SATA connectors in order to move the files from G4 to G5.

Idea is to copy contents from old G4 Work partition to G5 Work and copy old G4 SYS contents to new G5 SYS.
Will the backup program from Onyxsoft do the work or the safest route is to use a shell command?

I don't mind taking time for the migration, I just want to make sure that it will work (timestamps, file attributes etc).
Also, I have not installed the 3.9 SDK so, perhaps I don't have soft links? But I am not 100% sure about it..

Hello!

At least, for saving separetly your prefs, you can use BackupRestoreMorphOSPrefsFiles, made by Patbest;
It seems that the original web site is out, but you can find it e.g. here:

http://meta-morphos.fr/download/files/BackupRestoreMorphOSPrefsFiles.lha

MorphOSian salutations.

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With that much data I'd think it would be the easiest to either connect your G4 HD to G5 and copy then, or have an extra HD which you could use for transfer if you don't dare to move the original HD. I don't know about your connectors if I'd need any adapters. In any case use SFS or other Amiga filesystem on every medium, don't copy to that NTFS.

Or if you want to use NTFS or some other filesystem which supports very big filesizes, you could create an image file which would be formatted to SFS and then copy your backup inside of that mounted image file. There is a guide for it, but don't use FAT because it doesn't support big enough filesizes.

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If you don't have SDK: assign or at least it points to empty dir, then you don't have SDK installed. It's quite unusual to other programs to use soft links, so it'd be quite safe to copy with copy all clone method from the shell.

Check the exact directory sizes after the backup that you have exactly the same amount of bytes on both drives. If the amount differs then there might have been links or something which hasn't been copied correctly.

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This was very useful for me. Is there a way though to see the copying progress?

Also, is there a command that copies and updates files in the destination drawer without deleting anything?

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Previously mentioned BackUp can do that without the Clean option, but I've also used (and still use many times) the UpDateCopy shell command.

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Minor correction, the Dual 2.7GHz G5 is dual G5 CPU, not dual cores on a single CPU. I guess if G5 is used to describe the computer, instead of the CPU inside it, then calling it dual core would be correct.

I feel like I am turning into Andreas Wolf by writing a post like this, I better go back to sleep and get more rest, as this site does not need more than one A. Wolf.

@jPV

Thanks

@Yasu

And mirrorcopy's NODEL option probably does the same too...

Is there a command in mirrorcopy where you exclude some drawers (and subdrawers)?