Installing Debian On My Dell Laptop

There are several things I would add
#1 For myself, Clonezilla worked best from a CD, unless one has a machine that has
no DVD player.
#2 Use the Clonezilla command line to mkdir and mount the partition one needs for the partimage.
#3 Clonezilla will write too ntfs just as well as ext4 and Fat32, in other words it can be used in a pure Windows environment or a mixed Windows/Linux.
#4 Clonezilla also writes well to a USB device or to a internal device, one can also rename the bkup image, to make better sense than just a date.

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CloneZilla.
I boot it from a flash drive and also write my backup to a flash (USB) drive.
Instead of full volume backups, I backup partitions 1 & 2. EFI and root. This backup is done once a
month because this backup is my fall back recovery if Timeshift does not restore root properly.


I backup my data files on a different schedule.

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I actually wore out a clonezilla cd
 it stopped booting.
Changed to a small flash drive and got latest version.

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I gave one away to our Grandaughter’s hubby and burned a new one!!!

I think I’ll go a similar road because Timeshift occasionally does fail.

Is once a week overdoing the amount of backups ?

Instead of Timeshift, what I do is a Clonezilla run just backing up one partition (saveparts option).

This is a personal option base on your comfort level. When I was new to Linux, I took backups more often with CloneZilla. With Timeshift, I enable daily and weekly backups because they are fast and easy.

Just remembered: Emmabuntus and friends describe how to use Clonezilla to make a usb key which can be used for recycling batches of identical machines obtained from businesses that regularly replace their materiel (manual mode). It was written in French but there are translations (presumably automatic).
https://emmabuntus.org/making-a-clone-to-be-used-with-the-emmabuntus-refurbishing-key/
Just in case that doesn’t work (language button bottom right)