Hi,
> What program should I use, and what is reasonable back up plan ?
Try taper by Yusuf Nagree. It works on the console and can be started on the
command line and scheduled with cron for doing unattended backups. Generally,
you should try to make the backups with as little activity on the system as
possible. Depending on the amount of work you do at the computer, a monthly or
weekly full backup of your data files and incremental backups every few days in
between should be enough for a home user. That way, when your system goes down,
you only need to restore the full backup and the incremental backups since the
last full backup. As for the system itself, it is not a good idea to restore it
while it's running, as you've noticed. To be prepared for a crash, make a full
backup of the system (don't backup the /proc directory) and build yourself an
emergency disk with which you can reboot the computer and restore the system
files when necessary.
Have a nice day,
Sebastian
