How to Backup and Restore the Linux File System - Timeshift Tutorial

[@MrTxipri]

After 341243 videos covering just timeshift installation.... Finally a timeshift tutorial showing an actual break and restore workflow. Great work! Everything crystal-clear for newcomers as I. Like and subscribed

[@jwphubert]

Can't agree more. You're more patient than I am. I stopped watching after 234,654 videos talking about how to install Timeshift with no examples on how to restore. Until I saw Brendon's video about it. Straight to the point, I like that. Thank!

[@ridhamdave9844]

Maybe it was my lucky day, as the first recommended video for Time shift was this one. Thanks for disliking other 300K videos and liking this one. :)

[@dwayne6402]

I love your videos, you get right to it, no fancy, flashy, annoying openers. You have a great demeanor, your video content and quality is top shelf.

[@TechHut]

Thank you :)

[@Jeff_Seely]

I agree with the likeable demeanor. It's always what you get too.

[@tasvirmahmood3558]

Thank you, absolutely perfect tutorial. Other KZbinrs rushed through the details about restoring on a flash drive , and how to restore from a flash drive. Thanks

[@KiwiMangos]

This is a great explanation of Timeshift. It is certainly needed with how much control we have over the OS and how easily we can break it lol. Thank you very much TechHut.

[@RX120D]

Thank you for showing an actual use case for Timeshift. As a relatively new Linux user, there is so much documentation of what options are available for a given piece of software, but there's rarely an actual demo of the features. I have a robust backup set created for my home studio which gives me confidence in my system but I've had no reason to restore from a snapshot yet. That mystery gives me anxiety. Seeing you run through the process alleviated some stress for me. Thanks again.

[@auntiecarol]

Spelling out 'rsync' and 'bttrfs' and 'etc' made my head hurt. And then with "mini-licious" @4:50 I actually screamed and scared the dog. English aside, a thumbs up. Was looking for something simple to send to a friend, and this fits the bill. Nice job!

[@Hvandersleyen]

You never want to use timeshift until you have to and today I had to. Thank you

[@TheMangovnik]

Great video. I am new to linux and I found out that I am more efficient in breaking things than repairing them and this is big time saver.

[@pb8582]

After recking about 500001 times my desktop I did appreciate your video

[@Gabriel-jx4or]

4:45 the way you pronounced "miscellaneous" made me laugh 🤣

[@aer0449]

Same xD.. It happens you know sometime

[@jasperzanjani]

lmao

[@jasperzanjani]

gold!

[@darioorlic1941]

And the occasional "ecspecially".

[@kj-marslander]

I thought I heard a combination of 'malicious' and 'miscellaneous'

[@luthermanhole3866]

Great walkthrough. Also one of the greatest pronunciations of "miscellaneous" ever uttered.

[@kellypainter7625]

I see this video today AFTER I just had the opportunity to do this for real. It worked perfectly. Bacon saved.

[@Tommyr]

The lastest Mint kernel update borked my update manager and won't do updates now. So time to see how well Timeshift works! I ALWAYS do a Timeshift before doing a kernel update. Thanks for the great tutorial.

[@Ryfibi]

This should be added to all the installation processes of user friendly distros :D

[@crazyoldcatman318]

Thank you. This was very helpful. I was searching for an overview of how this works both before and especially after a disaster.

[@trustabyss]

You should have mentioned in your video that snapshots can only be stored on Linux partitions. NTFS not allowed, and for good reason, since NTFS does not retain Linux permissions.

[@ing.nicola1706]

This video has saved my life tonight 👍😁 . I have to finish a project and xubuntu was broken. Whit a live of linux mint and Timeshift i had restored a snapshot ! Thanks

[@thxyves8468]

Thanks a lot for such a great tutorial. Great explanations, and you really have very good teaching skills. Thumb up!

[@willprince643]

Thanks a lot, not that long ago I reinstalled my OS for third time since I switched to Linux on my main PC in May or June, second time would be enough had I set up Timeshift snapshot before, now I'm correcting that mistake.

[@markbennett1237]

I had a Debian system where I had backed up my entire system using Timeshift. One day an update screwed it up so that I could not boot up anymore. I tried restoring just like you did. Unfortunately, it just didn't work. It gave me an error on boot up that I could not fix. Our IT expert at work spent some time trying to help me, but eventually gave up. I ended up reinstalling Debian only to have it happen again after updating. So I switched to Ubuntu and it has been fine ever since.

[@marioh5634]

Was this Debian stable? What version was it? Also curious as to what you were tweaking that might’ve caused the boot failure. Debian is not that much different from Ubuntu, if you somehow broke your Debian system it is not really unlikely to happen again in Ubuntu.

[@oussamasaid9635]

Great tutorial , it was really useful ,u just did a great job bro . keep it up 😉 🙏🏻

[@vancouverhp90]

great video and a very detailed explanation! Keep going, bro :)

[@adrianniwa1438]

Your vid just saved my morning. Right after accidentally deleting half of my / folder :)

[@betanpc8210]

Awesome tutorial so that's how you restore your linux on timeshift

[@interaktek]

thank you! i need to create a restorable mint partition because i'm trying to troubleshoot why my pc won't boot from a windows bootable usb. you're a lifesaver!

[@We-Do-NOT-Consent-303]

Hey Bro. at 8:11 where did you get the machine reset command? I can't see what you are doing and going too fast. OK, now I saw that you were using a VM. But what if I want to restore a VMware Windows installation, would that be included in the Timeshift archive?

[@akkinemaster4767]

THIS VIDEO GOING TO BE VERY HELP FOR ME , Really amazing and knowledgeable video .after watching i feel like i am able to backup my pc and restore it also .thanks for making this video ❤️

[@chuckr8727]

Worked on my dual boot system after a Linux Mint Virginia fail. Dual boot menu looked a little different though but still worked. Thanks

[@celestialadministration]

Fantastic, I need to make one for my manjaroi3 setup.

[@safatkhan676]

Will it work on a partition? For example, I have a partition for the system and another for data(docs,pics,etc) on the same ssd. Can I make it image the entire system partition and backup from there in case upgrade ruins my OS?

[@techzone2009]

timeshift --restore .. it's very easy to recover system even from tty ...🙏🙏

[@lamrof]

1. Can time shift make the flash drive bootable? 2. What kind of file system do you create on the flash drive? 3. What is the command you use to start timeshift in the flash drive? 4. Can you restore on the same broken file system or do you have to use another partition to restore? 5. How do you read MISC?

[@vasiovasio]

Useful video! Thank you!

[@UlyssesZopol]

Oh man, you just saved my life. Are you a DJ? ;-)

[@Jeff_Seely]

Great tutorial and thanks for the time and effort creating it. I have only been using Timshift for a few months and it has already saved my bacon. It is sweet! Alternatively, I had been using Rescuezilla and it creates more of a baremetal backup solution. It wont do any incremental backups and it takes a while longer than timeshift but it'll save you depending how and when you perform the backup. Along with it, I cron'ed an rsync of the home directory. Frankly, this this method is a littler more difficult for the new guy and I tend to gravitate toward the KISS principle (Keep it simple...). Timeshift is about as simple as it gets. I highly recommend it! Some guys like the good ol dd command (Disk Destroyer). We don't get to take second bets with the dd command and I have shot down my drive with that one before...🤣

[@RCSky7711]

Getting Linux working right is like a house of cards. It gets better as you go and then you go a little too far and everything is messed up. It could be a driver update or some line of code you changed and now it's broken. I will try this tool for sure!

[@uberdonkey9721]

Great. Well edited video and gave me confidence in using timeshift (I felt burnt first time I used it as I did a automatic backup, with home directory, and before I knew it my system collapsed because time shift had filled my hard drive). So NEVER backup home directory (not sure why its even an option) and I also recommend to simply backup when you feel needed, not on a schedule.

[@TheIndustrialphreak]

Will this get everything from grub/boot and full root or is this just a ~/* sort of thing. Im about ready to mess around with my nvidia drivers

[@selfelements8037]

How large are the snapshot files compared to the entire system partition?

[@CAZOlsen]

just did a restore today on my intel NUC today took all nessesary precautions Did a backup before i started experimenting Save files on my nextcloud instance bascially prepaired everything Off course i something went wrong and i decided to do a restore from snapstore this first time I have tried it Set timeshift to restore at i took some time so i went out When i came back the intel NUC could not start but was on So i had to force turn off the NUC After this it kept me in a loop of initramfs I try to do a fresh install of pop os and then restore again from snapshot Figureing that something went wrong But i lost all backups on the hard drive i have no idea how that happend I even lost the backups on another partition that i dont use with this pc I am very confused as to what Happend

[@drakemallard6100]

Great Video, even 3 years later :-) May you pls consider doing a backup and restore video on Fedora using btfrs?

[@rockyraab8290]

I have discovered that since the Mint team took over development of Timeshift, it no longer truly works in background. In Mint 21, when Timeshift starts to run, I'm pretty much locked out of most functions until it is done. I hope they fix that soon.

[@thierry.lavallee]

Can we create multiple profiles? One for the system and another at other frequencies for other directories?

[@TheUltimateYouTuberyay]

One night when I was really tired, I accidentally installed files from Parrot that uninstalled all of Linux Mint, cinnamon was still running, so I was able to reinstall timeshift before it died. So I was just sitting at a black screen, the I realized that the system was still running, I just didn't have a GUI. So I was able to SSH into my system and tell Timeshift to restore my system :3

[@da_pwo]

Thanks man I’m gonna try deleting a bunch of libraries to see if it fixes another issue I’m having

[@myrabriggs1268]

What is the meaning of snapshot if it excludes root folder and home folder?

[@Dennis-ur4zu]

you're supposed to backup your documents on a external drive or cloud, not on the same PC! timeshift is meant to undo updates that broke something.

[@momolamm]

Great video👌🏾 thanks a lot

[@savantshuia]

you can do all this through the command line too right?

[@woodygilson3465]

How about some cli-based local backup demos? Timeshift was simple enough in CLI, but after two days of attempting to configure backintime-cli only to keep getting "Error: backintime is not configured" was enough to make me give up and uninstall.

[@AliRadhi]

thank you your video is very helpfull . is there any application can make an iso of my all linux with changes and software ?

[@michaelljunge4394]

Thank you for a great video! Keep it up ♥️

[@puppy_BYTE]

on mine I always save home directory since it contains ~/.config folder settings which I use to restore...

[@realdragon]

I'm about to update system that I didn't update in few months, this will help me out

[@memo2678]

Thanks!

[@paullong4086]

I tried to restore EndeavourOS KDE using Timeshift, but when I rebooted, all I got was a flashing cursor. I have, however, successfuly restored Linux Mint and Manjaro using Timeshift. I don't want to use EndeavourOS without being able to back it up, so I'm using Manjaro KDE now.

[@Rich-can-do]

this was really handy. I do development and I have lots of docs and things in my home directory so snapshot is great ty/

[@entertaiNmotivate]

while creating snapshots will it format external drive? Becoz i already have some files in my external harddisk and i want snapshot to be one of the file among that, instead of formatting my external harddisk by replacing whole external harddisk into snapshot

[@yashkamat4842]

Hey I had a few questions regarding this. I have my home folder located on a separate partition on my disc and the main OS(In my case Zorin OS) on another partition. I did this because I'd heard that I'd be much easier to use the same home folder across different distributions I use. So I wanted to know what files are stored on the home folder. I know that my personal files and config files of apps like browsers, messaging apps like telegram are on it but is there anything else crutial to the system? Is it ok if I don't backup my home folder because it's already on a separate drive? I have already broken and restored my system but the configuration of the apps I didn't break is lost everytime I restore; hence I'm asking these questions. Thank in advance✌✌

[@ahmeddeghady4510]

Thank You so much! Does the live boot usb have to be the same distro as the one installed and going to be restored? I mean, I have arch linux, and it doesn't have GUI to use the system before installation as most of other distros installations so it's going to be problamatic to restore. If I broke my system, can I restore my Arch using a Manjaro (for example) live usb?

[@sandryeyev]

great guide and explanation! thank you!

[@SBL972-one]

how do I save from a linux live usb, so that it saves the disk that is in my pc? THANKS I don't see this in the interface_

[@tubejim101]

What do you recommend for backing up your home dir?

[@patrickwesleyjohnson1981]

I just used timeshift and i got a terminal login ttyl. can't seem to restore correctly. 😢 and it broke my install. Pressing ctl + f1 through f8, does nothing, reinstalling grub, does nothing.

[@craterface12]

Would this help me to restore my data if I reinstalled to fix a buggy install of Pop OS?

[@TimmyTurner421]

Great explanation. Thank you very much.

[@CudaNick]

Can I do the snapshots on the usb where also the iso file is? I have only a small boot drive, therefore I will need the external flash drive. It might be a dumb question, but I'm a newbie trying out Manjaro for a few weeks already and I definitely need to get this right ^^

[@tonyravindran]

How and when should we make use of the options in the advanced restore tabs?

[@palmwaytech]

Will a Seagate - Expansion 2TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive work for a backup , we have about 1TB drive space , this is a good video , straight forward info. thank you. Nothing special we have to back up , just the home directory, so if something breaks i have this on a external drive., but probably have to get the hard drive formated first.

[@Rensuke_Hero-gami]

I was testing Timeshift for the first time, and when I noticed it takes too much storage spaces(let's say it took 4Gb), I cancel the snapshot process. Then, I delete the snapshot file, but my storage spaces are not going back to it's original state(let's say it only deleted 2Gb out of 4Gb) I need help on how to delete the rest of 2Gb...

[@davidwayne9982]

Yeah- I love messing with them-- and it usually ends up in the UP direction ( "messed up"- ha).... but I'm learning. I can't get TIMESHIFT to work sometimes.. it wants to put things on the same drive it's ON-- which if my SSD goes bad-- it - AND the snapshots are GONE.. that's kinda STUPID. I managed to put a backup on the other hard drive and it would NOT let me restore from that.. becuase it wasn't on that other drive. Works great in RSYNC but NOT on BRTFS.. (found this happening with SPIRAL that has BRTRF)

[@sronweb]

Thanks for this video. So far I have used Clonezilla for the image backup of partitions but, as we know, it has the limitation that is not possible to restore individual folders or files. Instead, I understood correctly, with Timeshift, is possible to restore complete gnu-linux partition, restore grub etc so it can be a clonezilla replacement or I can restore individual files and folder. Please, correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks

[@vladimirtoma9035]

i have a problem. i dont have enough space...i made a new snapshot with insufficient space on my laptop. it took all the 25 GB of remaining space but apparently it wasnt sufficient to finish the process. Now i have no backup in timeshift and i am missing all my free space. i cant see the snapshot in the timeshift panel. i cant delete it from the folder, under "snapshots" either. i tried uninstalling the app...still didnt delete the snapshot (it got me 1.9 gb of space, and i no longer have it installed. but it still takes up 30+ GB of my memory and i dont have the option to delete these folders. running sudo apt autoclean and sudo apt autopurge didnt help either...any suggestions? Please?...

[@davidwayne9982]

I've had WEIRD stuff happening--- and found out when it starts doing that-- like changing settings on me every time I change screens.... that means the power supply is going bad..(makes the second one- so I'm going 300W next time instead of this 240W-- system recommendations says it works on either one-- but I use a lot- so probably need the extra power-- Who knows?

[@REDCULT-is-Live]

Does it restores the wallpaper on the desktop as well? Or does it backup the .config .cache and .local??

[@mavster70]

Nice tutorial. One question, if I have an sdcard slot in my laptop, would install Linux lite on it together with my main system backups work? By doing that I will always carry a recovery on the go without an external drive and a live Iso Cd (which I do not have).

[@valvelifter1]

Well produced. Thank you.

[@chairman67]

Is it easy (or possible) to restore a Timeshift backup to an operating system installed in an LVM container volume on a LUKS encrypted partition ? Typically on a laptop that has the OS installed with encryption.

[@doctorsocrates4413]

My own software installations are rather minimal so i find it just as quick to perform a reinstall from a live medium and then add my programs afterwards..it just seems such a long process especially if you continually add programs as time marches on.

[@eliaszmichal4182]

Hi, I do not understand what you are saying from 4 min, because you selected exclude all files, so what kind of backup do you want to do ?? I do not understand this, I am looking for an option to backup the entire system manually, the entire system. Thanks

[@MrStefanokj]

I have the same backup settings as yours, but when I start making a backup it takes about 2 hours (although I'm excluding home and root), could you tell me why?

[@faizeefarhan2729]

Probably the size is pretty big

[@MrStefanokj]

@@faizeefarhan2729 I was trying to backup my entire disk on the same disk hahah

[@prabinacharya3266]

1. If i broke something on root directory and then i use timeshift to restore to my previous state, will all of my pics and vids will be deleted? 2. Since i can copy all of my file from live usb mode too, will "exclude all files" option that you selected on this video will suffice? Will it be just enough if i only broke root directory?

[@Javaman92]

What if the OS you are restoring doesn't come with Timeshift? Ubuntu 24.4 did not come with it. I just installed it. Hopefully I won't kill it totally and I will be able to do a reset. This was good, thank you.

[@johngoard8272]

Just one query what do you do if the system just freezes and nothing will work like ie the mouse?

[@gammawebhosting2695]

hi, I have lost access to the Ubuntu desktop, only console, do you know how to do a restore from console? any guide?

[@sfisher923]

I might be abusing the restore feature trying to figure out installation and uninstallation (Mint 20.04)

[@donalfredoconforti2185]

Grazie molto utile e semplice la spiegazione

[@AxelWerner]

You failed to mention IMPORTANT SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS for timeshift: like have a very seperate/reserved partition for it alone (not shared with other apps nor have it already mounted somewhere at system boot). Since at the moment (10/2021) timeshift on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS seems unable to handle already mounted partitions correctly and does mount it twice (without even unmounting after). this is really bad!!

[@diabissam2368]

thank u for this fantastic toturial

[@TomFoolery9001]

I would love this too! I see that the btrfs snapshots are almost instantaneous and I believe they have better compression. I would love a pro's/cons for the two timeshift options. Thanks for showing how to actually do a restore!

[@advaitc2554]

Newbie here. I'm now doing my first backup of my Fedora 34 BTRFS system. I'm using Timeshift Rsync. I'm now backing up all my files to an external hard drive. Does Timeshift Rsync skip open files? Or do open files also get backed up? Thx!

[@agungsatria9196]

What if there is no timeshift pre-installed on live usb? Can we install it manually from live USB?

[@Quackenfr]

cant i just flash linux on an usb and then put a backup.tar file in it? it saves alot of space and i dont see the diffrence

[@cs_wolke]

How long does it take you make a snapshot? I created one and it already runs the whole day and is still not finished

[@shaneschwalger2482]

such a good tutorial. thank you

[@Ton-y008]

When i got to the part of copying files i noticed that all of them were gone and my hard drive was almost full so i realized that was because of the timeshifts backups, so i removed the last one and restored my pc and it got fixed

[@jadhal9280]

I have diff partition C drive windows and d dive as secondary as ntfs And 3 and 4 for linux If I take linux backup with kernal 256 mb partition When I restore all linux partition What happens to windows boot partition And linux kernel partition. And linux partition

[@albertjimenez6605]

IMPRESIONANTE! Very thanks.

[@ashwanikumar-fs7ej]

Mine rebooting system is taking more time than noramal maybe 30 minutes what to do😊

[@vladartiomav2473]

Unfortunately, the restoration didn't work for me with a btrfs drive. I tried via a bootable Live USB, but it complained that it couldn't read the drive. Looked on the web for a solution, but apparently some other people had big trouble mixing btrfs and rsync in Timeshift. Moved on. I just had to reinstall everything..

[@Dennis-ur4zu]

did you encrypt your btrfs drive? in that case you have to use your OS's terminal, log in and do 'timeshift --restore'

[@techgeek1162]

Good but why ? After backing up with timeshift in an external media you think you are safe. But here is the challenge. If your linux system messed up during update or something. Now you have to run around to find a live install which has timeshift installed and that is not easy. So why not take backup of the linux system using clonezilla like old school. If anything happens blindly restore. So what is the diference between timeshift restoring and clonezilla restoring ?

[@pj3359]

Does you solution work with Fedora 38 too?