Backing up a Linux machine using to a Windows PC

Hey guys,

I have quite the question and was hoping someone could point me to the right direction as Google failed to do so.

I have a Windows 7 PC and also own a website that runs on CentOS:

I wanted to ask what is the most efficient way to backup my whole CentOS machine (hard disk size is 30 GB), in a way that would allow me to restore the machine back to its current state in case the whole server or hard disk are gone.

I don't require the ability to restore specific files so I don't mind ending up with one big 30 GB file that can somehow be used to re-create my machine if something happens.

Thanks a lot!

I also use Centos to run all my servers. So far I have only backed-up my data. I don't quite understand why you would want to back up the entire server. Perhaps you can elaborate on your reasons for wanting to do so.

Linux works nicely with a number of other computer systems, including Windows. With a few simple commands, Linux will happily safeguard data in those systems as well.
entirely.

For now, here's a quick Samba example. Pretend that you have a Windows PC called
speedy on your network. The user has shared the C: drive with the name SPEEDY_C. I can mount
that share on a Linux system running Samba like this:

smbmount //speedy/speedy_c /mnt/linux_mount_point

Then, I simply back it up to my drive like this:

cd /mnt/linux_mount_point
tar -cvf /dev/st0.

morhsn,

Usually backup are taken only for data ( say oracle database , web application data etc )

One option would be to have RAID level protection. You can try RAID 1 , RAID 10 etc..

If you still after backup , I would advise to look for hard disk clone backup tools like Clonezilla etc .. Or try dd command ( be careful when using this)

Hi,

Sounds like you need something to take a BMR image. I know software like Ghost do the trick. So check on-line and see what is available for your CentOS.

Samba server and rsync options simultaniously gives you a feature to keep a backup of entire disk on Windows Machine as well as there are so many third party tools are availble there using that You can do this like FWbackups,Bacula