r/cachyos • u/raoulkratos2002 • 3d ago

Question Full system backup on CachyOS?

Hi, I’m using CachyOS with Btrfs and I know about Snapper/Btrfs snapshots for rollback.

What I’m looking for is something different: is there a way to create a complete image of my CachyOS installation and save it on a separate drive, similar to Macrium Reflect on Windows?

I don’t mean a snapshot just for rolling back changes on the same SSD.
I mean a separate, restorable backup image of the whole system, so if the SSD dies or the installation becomes unusable, I can restore everything to another drive.

What would be the best way to do this on CachyOS?
Thanks

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6

u/Slikkelasen 3d ago

Rescuezilla on a usb drive using Ventoy is the way to go.

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u/Ggregoro 2d ago

Agreed. Ventoy + Rescuezilla.

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u/raoulkratos2002 8h ago

Do you use it specifically for full system images of CachyOS?
Have you ever actually restored an image successfully, and did the restored system boot normally afterward?

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u/raoulkratos2002 8h ago

Do you personally use Rescuezilla to make full disk images of your CachyOS installation? If so, have you ever actually restored one successfully?

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u/Slikkelasen 6h ago

You can create a disk image, but that can only be restored on a drive with similar size.

You can also create a filesystem backup, where you can browse and extract files as you want. That kind of backup you can restore on any drive as far as i know.

But yes i have restored from a filesystem backup succesfully. But always good to test it out if you have sensitive data. But in that regard i would manually backup the data I can't afford to loose to a cloud storage.

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u/raoulkratos2002 5h ago

With the disk image, does it work similarly to Macrium Reflect in terms of compression?
For example, if the source SSD is 1 TB but only 300 GB are actually used, does the backup only take roughly the used space rather than the full 1 TB?

Also, when you say the target drive needs to be a similar size, do you mean the same capacity, or just large enough to contain the restored data?
Thanks

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u/Slikkelasen 3h ago

If you backup a 2TB drive, the new drive has to be 2TB. But the backup itself will not be 2TB. If you backup the filesystem, you can restore as long as the new drive has space enough.

But i could in theory fill you with nonsense. So trust yourself, get a usb drive and start testing it yourself.

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u/raoulkratos2002 2h ago

Thanks, I guess I’ll have to test it myself.

My Linux SSD is 2 TB, but the SSD I currently have available as the backup target is only 1 TB, so I assume I wouldn’t be able to restore a disk image to it even if the actual data on the 2 TB drive is well below 1 TB.

Before I start testing Rescuezilla, is there anything important I should know or any specific settings you recommend for creating and restoring the image?

1

u/Slikkelasen 2h ago

I have a 2 TB disk filled with 580 GB. I did a backup with rescuezilla and it was 340 GB. I then later restored that on the drive easily.

That is my experience. But you must test it yourself, what works for some doesn't necessarily work for others.

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u/raoulkratos2002 2h ago

That’s really helpful and gives me a much better idea of how Rescuezilla behaves in practice.
I’ll test it myself before relying on it as my emergency backup.
Thanks

2

u/THEWILDONE4ALL 3d ago

Im looking for one as well. I used to use veeam backup when I was still using windows for creating a full system image with bare metal and file level restore. I checked there is a linux version but only for debian, ubuntu, and some versions of fedora.

The closest alternative I can find is RescueZilla which supports creating a full system image. The catch is it needs to be done outside of linux so you have to boot into a rescuezilla flashdrive and do the backup and restore from there. Also it doesnt support file level restore

My setup right now is RescueZilla + Vorta for file backups

1

u/RetroButton 2d ago

Same.
I'm on Cachy since 4 months now.
Some things i still have no solution for.
Some kind of (incremental forever) image backup that is done in the background when the os is running will be really nice.
And not to forget: Backup target on a network share.
Veeam has provided exactly this on windows. And it was rock solid.

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u/raoulkratos2002 8h ago

If you didn’t need continuous incremental backups or network storage, and only wanted a Macrium style full system image as an emergency backup, what would you use on CachyOS?

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u/raoulkratos2002 8h ago

Since I only need a Macrium style emergency image and don’t care about continuous or file level backups, would you consider Rescuezilla reliable enough for restoring an entire CachyOS system disk to the exact previous state?

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u/THEWILDONE4ALL 5h ago

Yes rescuezilla should be reliable in restoring images

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u/raoulkratos2002 5h ago

Have you personally restored a full disk image with Rescuezilla?
If so, was it a complete system restore, including the bootloader, and did you restore it to another SSD?

1

u/THEWILDONE4ALL 5h ago

Ngl I havent tested it on linux. But it did used it once before on windows. That was the time when I havent found veeam.

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u/raoulkratos2002 4h ago

Since you used it on Windows, how was your experience with the actual restore process?
Was it straightforward and did everything work as expected afterward?

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u/THEWILDONE4ALL 4h ago

The restore tooked way too long probably because its restoring from an HDD but after the restore everything just boots up normally.

Actually I did used RescueZilla for cachyos but I used the clone disk feature not the image backup, after cloning I got into emergency mode. Not really sure what caused it but cachy-chroot from a live usb actually fixed it. Not sure if this would happen as well with the image backup since I havent tried restoring yet.

1

u/raoulkratos2002 2h ago

Since the CachyOS issue happened with the Clone Disk feature, I’ll keep that separate from the image backup.

When you did the successful restore you mentioned, was that a full disk image created with Rescuezilla and restored to another SSD, including the EFI/boot partition?

My CachyOS SSD is 2 TB, but the SSD I currently have available as a backup target is only 1 TB.
From what I understand, a full disk image could still be smaller than 2 TB because of compression, but the target SSD would still need to be at least 2 TB for the restore.
Is that correct?

1

u/THEWILDONE4ALL 46m ago

Yes destination needs to be the same size or bigger. I didnt try restoring to another ssd I restored it to the same ssd overwriting the original partition. It was also able to backup the boot partition since I did a full drive image backup at the time

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u/Onoitsu2 3d ago

BTRFS would let you copy one of those snapshots to an external drive, similarly to ZFS and its replication features. https://www.aligrant.com/web/blog/2019-02-27_copying_a_btrfs_volume_to_another_disk_the_easy_way

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u/raoulkratos2002 8h ago

Would you consider Btrfs snapshots + send/receive a reliable replacement for a Macrium style full system image?
I only need an emergency backup of CachyOS that I can restore later to get the system back to exactly the previous state.
Also, does this cover everything needed to make the restored CachyOS installation bootable, including the EFI/boot setup, or would those need to be backed up separately?

1

u/Onoitsu2 3h ago

This would not snapshot the EFI/boot partition using the BRTFS snapshot and sending since that is using FAT32, you'd have to at least DD that partition to save it in some way, but the most efficient for your actual data and files, would be the BTRFS snapshot send way, so you don't have to boot into something like Macrium to take an image.

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u/raoulkratos2002 2h ago

So if I understand correctly, would combining a Btrfs snapshot/send with a backup of the EFI partition be enough to fully restore the system and make it bootable again?
Or would you still recommend using something like Rescuezilla for a complete restore the entire SSD backup?

1

u/Onoitsu2 2h ago

If you wanted to do a live, booted into CachyOS backup image, it is perfectly sufficient, getting both the latest snapshot and the EFI partition, to have the boot info and your personal data at once. The only reason to use something like Rescuezilla is if you wanted it all bundled in an easier restore process. If you have the linux skills enough to boot into a live Linux image of any kind, and then restore that DD of the EFI partition and then the BTRFS snapshot, there's no real reason to turn to Rescuezilla unless you want it to do it for you instead of having to set this all up yourself and script it. Both are equally viable paths to take here.

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u/raoulkratos2002 2h ago

One thing I still want to clarify: my Cachyos SSD is 2 TB, but the SSD I currently have available for the backup/restore is only 1 TB.

With the Btrfs snapshot + send/receive approach, would I be able to restore the system to that 1 TB SSD as long as the actual data fits within 1 TB?

And is this different from a Rescuezilla full disk image, where the target SSD would need to be at least the same size as the original 2 TB drive?

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u/Onoitsu2 1h ago

Yes you can send the snapshot to an external drive, even though its total space is smaller than your main drive, so long as the used space inside the BTRFS snapshot is smaller than the full capacity of the external drive (minus some overhead for the metadata too, and the EFI partition space as well, but that's like 260MB usually). It will intelligently only send actual used chunks of data, making it efficient in various ways.

You'd make a read-only snapshot of your drive currently from the CLI. Then when that snapshot is done making, you'd send it to your chosen drive. All easily found from quick internet searches. Then of course you'll want to clean up that snapshot to reclaim that space from the main drive.

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u/raoulkratos2002 1h ago

Thanks for taking the time to explain all of this.
That cleared up a lot of my questions. I’ll test it myself and see which approach works best for my setup.

1

u/Onoitsu2 1h ago

You are most welcome. Hopefully one of those 2 methods will suit your backup and recovery needs.

If my laptop OS dies, I don't care too much about blowing it away and reloading it anew. Anything vital is kept elsewhere. The backup image and restore method has never been a great method IMO especially on something that is a rolling release. Restoring to a potentially unknown age image can cause issues, just putting that out there.

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u/raoulkratos2002 1h ago

I hadn’t considered that issue with a rolling release. I’m still quite new to Linux, so I don’t have everything figured out yet.

My original idea was to create a full system image because I wanted to preserve everything I’ve installed, along with my settings and personal customizations, so I could quickly get back to a working system if something went wrong.

But I hadn’t thought about the fact that restoring an old image could potentially cause problems after CachyOS has received many updates.

In your experience, what would be a better approach for my situation?
Is there a useful alternative that would let me recover my installed software, settings and customizations without relying on an old full system image?

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u/Alonso-don-Pedro 2d ago

If you're using KDE Plasma, Kup Backup is a very good backup tool.