That is true, but it might be easier for a Windows convert
to first use something like Mint or Solus or MX,
then try something more challenging like Slackware or Gentoo or BSD when they have some prior experience with Unix and have learnt to be comfortable with the CLI.
Thank you for your suggestion, but I already know GNU/Linux, and I’ve selected Solus Linux as my distribution of choice, at least for now. I’ve been using various GNU/Linux distributions off and on since the late 1990s. Now I’m on a journey to replace all the software I use on Windows for my daily use with GNU/Linux apps. However, as a result of your suggestion I will spin up a Slack VM, and revisit it.
Ernie
3 Likes
I use Veeam agent for linux. Free.
Terminal interface, not for the faint of heart but works a treat.
Backs up drives, partitions, folders, whatever. I back up to my NAS.
Create a boot image to use if you have to recover failed or new system.
I just visited Filen and it is only offering 10Gb free
@Mark_Simmons,
You can have more free space:
Go to Filen via your browser, click on your photo (avatar) and choose the “invite” tab (if you use Android browser, choose to open as desktop site, otherwise the invite tab doesn’t appears).
In this tab you have a code that you can use to send to your friends. If they accept it and sign up to Filen, they’ll get 10GB free and you’ll also get 10GB free. In total, you can get 40GB free: 10GB for creating the account and + 30GB via the referral code.
Jorge
Thank you! I’ll check it out,
Ernie
That’s one reason I settled on using MEGA to replace OneDrive when the time comes. 
Ernie
I knew about the referral option. I just don’t like that approach. It just feels - wrong - to me.
Ernie
2 Likes
Hi Ernest,
I totally agree with you.
I know it’s off-topic, but I’ll respond here about Filen.
I had doubts about how it worked and even asked here on the forum if you knew Filen.
After several tests, I checked that it worked well and I bought 100GB.
Jorge
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Me too.
I dont want to use other people to gain a few Gb.
1 Like
I’m glad you found a solution that works for you. My data storage requirements are not large, and I found that MEGAsync completes the upload of everything I have on OneDrive (about .9GB currently) in seconds rather than parts of an hour (I estimate that it’s about four times faster here). Additionally, after installing the desktop client app from FlatHub, MEGA upgraded me from 20GB free to 25GB, something I wasn’t expecting (I wanted the desktop app for convenience).
Ernie
1 Like
Hey Neville,
I actually might want to do this soon. I still have Windows 10 on my computer, dual booting with Ubuntu + KDE Plasma. However, while Windows 10 is still installed, it has been close to a year since I have actually used it. I have considered removing the partition because of this.
My regular (non-SSD) harddrive is currently formatted as NTFS. Since I started my DevOps learning journey, I keep all my notes on that drive. How would you recommend I go about reformatting to ext4? Obviously, I need to back up, but are there any other steps you would recommend? Wipe, repartion, then move the files back over?
Hi Jimmy,
I suppose I would so something like this
- linux can read ntfs, so I would probably use rsync to transfer the ntfs files to some other disk.
rsync -aAXvH /common/* /media/nevj/Linux-external/common
that is how I backup my data partition
-
have a look… make sure all the files were copied.
-
use gparted to reformat the partition to ext4
-
then use rsync again to copy the files back.
That is by no means the only way. You could use any backup tool instead of rsync.
Regards
Neville
3 Likes
That seems simple enough, I guess I don’t know what I expected. Thanks for humoring me. I have reformatted small drives before (like flash drives) but its a bit more troublesome when its a couple hundred gigabytes.
Think about whether you want a MSDOS or GPT partition table. If you are reformating the whole disk, now is the time to plan. Is that what you intend… are you scrapping Win
or just the data partition?
If you feel uneasy, make 2 backups, by different means.
2 Likes
To be a bit more clear, I have two hard drives.
First is a 2 TB SSD. Before I switched to Linux, I had a 150 GB SSD which broke. Getting the 2 TB SSD is what made me try Linux again. I first installed Windows 10 on it, then I installed Ubuntu on a different partition. So both my OSs are on the SDD. I think to remove the Windows partition on this harddrive, I need to do just that.
Second is a 1 TB HDD, which is what I am talking about. I store some other files on there. It is currently NTFS.
The plan is to scrap Windows 10, probably resize my Linux partition (although maybe not to 2 TB, I might want to try some other distros or other weird things like FreeBSD or FreeDOS). I remember reading somewhere about how you can set it up so you have the same file system for each distro, I would need to look that up again.
Once that happens, then my HDD, which has data I still want on it would have no reason to be NTFS anymore. So I probably want a GPT partition table.
Yeah do that. You only need about 100Gb for a Linux root filesystem, provided you keep /home small and put your personal data on a separate partition.
You can mount a separate data partition to any Linux in a
multiboot setup.
Thanks for details. I get it now. Yes just reformat the Windows partition to whatever you want.
The data on HDD should probably go back there… save the SSD for OS’s . If you use a swap partition put it on the HDD.
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