System backup restore replication After Ive spent quite a while configuring and tweaking the system it is a natural thought to save its state so that if anything goes wrong I could restore it back. My requirements were: free and simple solution fast backup/restore I was using acronis true image for my windows system, but on linux theres a free and great tool that can do the job - fsarchiver. It is not installed by default so you have to install it via synaptic/apt-get It really is simple and great, can backup separate folders and the whole fs.. To backup the whole system I run it from the bootable media. Preparation. Get rescue disk from here. Burn it or create a bootable usb drive. Boot from the media. Mount the drive that will hold the backup image. Backup: $ fsarchiver savefs -j 2 -v ~/flash.fsa /dev/sdd1 Restore: $ fsarchiver restfs /data/flash.fsa id=0,dest=/dev/sdd1 -j option enables the usage of 2 CPUs, -v is for more information during the execution. download file now