After system didaster how to prepare / save most important data ?

[SYNass IT Ubuntu / Linux]

Hi Paul
Thanks for your efforts and feedback !

On Mon, 2008-05-19 at 14:53 +1000, Paul Dwerryhouse wrote:
> On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 11:27:17AM +0800, SYNass IT Ubuntu / Linux wrote:
> > 1st: Save /home completely to a USB stick or external USB HDD !

Just tried "Cut and Paste" of /home to a USB stick and failed with an
error message ;-(


> > 2nd: additionally Backup Evolution to a separate USB stick !!
> > 3rd - Thunderbird offers an import feature: How do I get Thunderbird's
> > data exported ???

How to get TB's data exported or saved is quite important !


> > 4th: any further hints and suggestions are very appreciated !!??

I have to correct my request to:
Any further SIMPLE hints and suggestions are very appreciated !!??
GUI solutions may be best for a greenhorn / newbie !?
TQ !


> Other alternatives are DVD (if your data size is under 4Gb) or tape (if
> you can afford it). Backing up to an external HDD is ok, but if you only
> have one of them, you then don't really have the option to take your
> backed-up data offsite.

No, data size is already OVER 4GB and therefor I didn't consider nor
mention DVD !
Available are these already mentioned USB sticks (8GB) and an external
USB or TCP/IP HDD drive with 200GB !


> > After having all important data extracted ...
> > ... how can I verify to have good backups / saves ??
> 
> If you're doing your backups with tar, it has a verify option: -W or
> --verify. Other archivers have verify options, also. 
> 
> One thing to note is, though, that these all rely on your data not changing
> when you back it up, which might be easy for some filesystems, but much
> more difficult for others (eg, /var or /home).

Filesystems will remain same, i.e. ext3 for /home !
/var isn't considered to be saved since I wanna setup from scratch !!

Important:
I only need / want to save the content of my personal home
folder /home/svobi and 
I wanna be sure I do have ALL data from Evolution and Thunderbird !
The rest, if not causing any further problems, NOT needed !!  


> One way around this issue is to use LVM to create your partitions, then
> take snapshots of them, and back-up those, so they don't change.

Please: No new experiments with whatever now !
As a greenhorn / newbie I have to solve my system's critical condition
before it 
lands a total loss !!! ;-)

Cheers, svobi