Copied system partitions to USB disk, how to proceed to make a clone?

[Karl Auer]

On Mon, 2021-10-25 at 10:08 +0200, Bo Berglund wrote:
> How can I back up the *entire* disk from Ubuntu 20.04 desktop running
> on that same disk? Some partitions are locked...

What does "locked" mean - encrypted?

Anyway - even if encrypted you should still be able to copy the entire
disk, you just won't be able to decrypt the encrypted portions. If by
"locked" you mean something else, then others will have to answer, as
do not know how to deal with that :-)

Assuming you have a disk big enough to copy it to, take an image copy
to a USB3-connected external disk. Safest to do the image copy to a
file on the external disk rather than to the raw disk. Or copy it to
network-connected storage somewhere. "dd" is your dangerous but
powerful friend :-)

> What I want is a full clone of *all* of the partitions so I can (in
> theory) restore the full content after the server had been release-
> upgraded to 20.04.3

I can see no way to test this without buying an identical disk to the
one you now have, restoring your backup image to it, swapping it for
the one now in the machine, and seeing if it boots.

> How can I stop Ubuntu Desktop from mounting my backup disk when I
> plug it in?

Excellent question. Tell us when you find out :-)

You could try "Settings -> Removable media -> Never prompt". I have not
tried this.

Regards, K.

-- 
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Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer

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