Backup and Restore your whole system with Time Shift

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Windows and Mac OS X have long had backup features baked in, that allow users to restore their system to a usable state after something went wrong. By default, a lot of distros don't include such a tool, but there is an option called Time Shift, which is our Project of the Month.

TimeShift website: https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift

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What is Time Shift

Time Shift is a backup and restore application designed to restore your system to a usable state after you've encountered an issue or you've broken it by installing something you shouldn't have.

Time Shift is not, however, intended to backup and restore user files. The goal here is to grab a snapshot of your system at a given time, and allow you to return to that state while leaving all your user files unchanged. It's basically like setting up a separate partition for your user files, but without the hassle of completely reinstalling a system.

The snapshots are incremental, which means that the first backup will be the biggest, and the next ones will only include the files that actually changed compared.

The Features

Time Shift has 2 modes: one based on rsync, and one based on BTRFS.

The Rsync mode uses rsync as a tool to copy the files, and hard links to avoid duplicating all files on each snapshot. Snapshots created using Rsync can be browsed using a file manager, since they are just copies of your files. This is pretty handy, as it allows you to just grab one file that you want to restore, without restoring everything else to a previous snapshot entirely.

The second mode, based on BTRFS, uses this file system's native backup and restore features. You obviously need to have a BTRFS filesystem to make use of that mode, but there are some advantages to it: these snapshots are perfect copies of your system, byte for byte, and can be restored in seconds, where the Rsync backups might take a lot more time, since they have to copy back all files. These BTRFS snapshots also use a lot less space.

Once you've chosen your backup and restore mode, you can decide what backup strategy you want: hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or at boot. The more snapshots you store, the more disk space you're going to use, obviously, so choose something reasonable depending on your needs and how often you tinker with your ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mxq8m_Hlxo