I would like to distro hop to EndeavourOS, and it has been suggested that I use rclone to copy my home folder to an external SSD. Unfortunately, I don’t have an external SSD at the moment, but I do have a phone that has plenty of free space. Is it a good idea to back up my computer files to an Android phone? My gut says it’s not a very good idea, but I’m not sure why.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: absu-f-ing NO. Whatever you put on a smart phone should be considered compromised.
Buy an external harddisk (Not! an SSD) for that.
at the moment
Get the proper tools to do the job right. There’s no gun to your head making you distrohop, so this isn’t an emergency. Just wait to get a real SSD first.
that’s probably a good idea
Doesn’t have to be a USB drive. You can also backup your data to a network storage if you have any.
Good choice with EndeavourOS btw., using it since over a year now and I am very happy.
yeah i do this quite often. tar gz the home folder and pushed it to the phone with rsync/termux
I used to back up important files into my phone for a while. Its an okay move for things you want to have all the time on you, but you should get a proper ssd/hdd with a backup tool (like deja dup/timeshift) sooner than later.
There’s usually a lot of private data in the home folder. I feel compromise or loss of my phone is a greater risk than loss of my home folder. I’d use an SD card before I’d use a phone.
What about a cloud option instead? I do this for stuff that I consider important but don’t want to lose. Upload to a “backup” folder and then download once you set up your next distro?
Though I wouldn’t do this with anything terribly important like my social security number or taxes or something. But stuff like a book I’m working on, game projects I have, music library, etc., general stuff I don’t want to lose.
I think at this point we can consider anything in the USA cloud subject to DHS/government subpoenas and AI scraping. I really don’t want to have to sanitize my backup data, I’d rather just keep it offline and not worry about it.
Encrypt on site. Don’t share the keys
Is your /home on a separate partition? If so, no need to copy anything.
If you really need to backup, I’d get a proper external disk, or failing that, backup to backblaze (or similar) and restore later.
At a pinch, you could tar it all up and copy it to a usb stick, if you have a big enough one to hand, but it’ll be slower.
/home is not on a separate partition, no. Yeah an external disk will probably be better
Next time make a partition ;)
Indeed that seems to be a good idea. When I do reinstall to “distro-hop”, I’ll try to do that then. How big should the “system”/non-home partition be?
How long is a piece of string?
Really depends on what you install.
‘du -hs /usr /var’ to get a rough idea.
