Best way to backup Debian

dd is a low level copy utility
you can create a bit-exact filesystem image with dd, which is probably what you want.

It will work with any OS so long as you have enough space to receive the disk image during the restore.

Backing up the linux part is almost easy: fsarchiver will save it to a file on the external drive. Backing up win7 is tougher. I use ntfsclone, but it is not exactly flexible nor intuitive.

>>58843410
Problem with dd is the partition you restore to has to be the exact same size as the original.

>>58843360
tar is the classic solution for *nix backups of you can be arsed to learn how to use it. There are several task oriented utilities in the repository as well.

>>58843815
or, you can just resize the image.

>>58843360
If you want to go with a complete clone of the disk partition (or even the entire disk), you can go with dd on Debian. But if you just want to back-up a number of files (your documents, for instance), you could use something like rsync. If you want to go even deeper (such as incremental backups), you may be able to go with something like sbackup (which is what I use).

As for backups on Windows, well, the sky's the limit. You can go with what >>58843640 recommended and use ntfsclone, or you can just go with some popular file backup solution on Windows.

Anyone have any experience with Amanda or other agent-based backup and restore software?

http://www.amanda.org/

>>58843360
dd is great if you want an exact clone but that's probably not what you want, since say a 1TB drive will have a 1TB image, that could be compressed however in a zip/7z/.tar.gz .

The better solution is to use something like partclone, if terminal scares you I'm sure there's guis for it. Clonezilla, a bootable linux also uses it and is ez modo for system backups, restores, cloning and such.
Of course on any linux the easiest way to backup a system on a non-cow filesystem is literally just tar it all into one file.

>>58843360
Just copy over you home directory. You can reinstall the system later.

>>58843360
You could use g4l or whatever they've renamed that project now. Personally I like Macrium Reflect free personal version for Windows backups.