Backup Your Entire Linux System Using Rsync

First, insert your backup medium (USB thumb drive or External hard disk). Then find the drive letter using ‘fdisk -l’ command. In my case, my Pen drive id is /dev/sdb1. Mount your drive to any location of your choice. I am going to mount it under /mnt.

$ sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt

To backup the entire system, all you have to do is open your Terminal and run the following command as root user:

$ sudo rsync -aAXv / --exclude={"/dev/*","/proc/*","/sys/*","/tmp/*","/run/*","/mnt/*","/media/*","/lost+found"} /mnt

This command will backup the entire root ( / ) directory, excluding /dev, /proc, /sys, /tmp, /run, /mnt, /media, /lost+found directories, and save the data in /mnt folder.
Let us break down the above command and see what each argument does.

• rsync – A fast, versatile, local and remote file-copying utility
• -aAXv – The files are transferred in “archive” mode, which ensures that symbolic links, devices, permissions, ownerships, modification times, ACLs, and extended attributes are preserved.
• / – Source directory
• –exclude – Excludes the given directories from backup.
• /mnt – It is the backup destination folder.

Please be mindful that you must exclude the destination directory, if it exists in the local system. It will avoid the an infinite loop.

To restore the backup, just reverse the source and destination paths in the above command.