Deciding which files to back up, and locating them, is the most difficult
step when attempting to perform a backup. Listed below are the most common
locations of important files and settings that you may want to back up.
-
Personal files (documents, music, photos and videos)
These are usually stored in your home folder (/home/your_name).
They could be in subfolders such as Desktop,
Documents, Pictures, Music and
Videos.
If your backup medium has sufficient space (if it is an external hard
disk, for example), consider backing up the entire Home folder. You can find
out how much disk space your Home folder takes up by using the
Disk Usage Analyzer.
-
Hidden files
Any file or folder name that starts with a period (.) is hidden by
default. To view hidden files, click the
View options
button in the toolbar, and then choose Show Hidden Files, or press
CtrlH. You can copy these to a
backup location like any other file.
-
Personal settings (desktop preferences, themes, and software settings)
Most applications store their settings in hidden folders inside your Home
folder (see above for information on hidden files).
Most of your application settings will be stored in the hidden folders
.config and .local in your Home folder.
-
System-wide settings
Settings for important parts of the system are not stored in your Home
folder. There are a number of locations that they could be stored, but most
are stored in the /etc folder. In general, you will not need to
back up these files on a home computer. If you are running a server, however,
you should back up the files for the services that it is running.