backing up /home

[John]

Bo Rosén wrote:
> mån 2004-10-18 klockan 20.39 skrev dave:
> 
>>If /home is on its own partition, why not just leave it alone?
> 
> 
> Well the partition has gone through several different installations and
> there is probably more than one file not needed anymore cluttering up
> the place.
> 
> 
>>ok, I just re-read your message. Is it because of the new HD? You might 
> 
> 
> This is the main reason. I got a cheap 80 Gb disk which should be more
> than enough to hold everything apart from /home and a 120 Gb which has
> several partitions, /home among them. I just wanted repartition the 120
> into one partition and put /home there. Perhaps /swap as well.
> 
> So, I though I'd just burn /home and then copy over the files I needed
> back into ubuntu. The box only has the one user and few services above
> what a standard home desktop might use, so there are few system files to
> save.

Many years ago, I went through this with OS/2. I was using OS/2 on a 170 
Mb disk in a 486, and I lashed out and bought an enormous 420 Mbyte drive.

I put all my data on the new drive, and swap too.


I was astonished to find that the second drive was actually _not_ the 
right place for swap. I hit the _my_ data far harder than I used the 
OS/2 files, and the right place for swap was the primary drive along 
with OS/2.

It is very likely the same is true with Linux too. When you think about 
it, time reading programs off your disk is essentially wasted time. What 
you want is to process your data,  and its reasonable to expect that's 
mostly what your computer does.


Best, I think, to use a swap file. Then you can easily move it whenever 
you find it's on the wrong drive, resize it when you find it too small 
or too big.