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I'm new to Linux and found out the hard way about the virtues of keeping a backup I can restore my system from. So I am trying Timeshift and have some questions about what's going on under the hood.

Some web articles about Timeshift say backups share common files to save disk space. I've made two snapshots with no real changes to my system. My file system says the first snapshot is about 8GB in size, and the second is about 8GB in size, and both are about 16GB in size.

Question 1: If Timeshift really does share common files to save disk space, is there some way I can get the true size of these backups? I'm expecting the first backup to be 8GB, and the second to be only a few megabytes.

Question 2: If Timeshift does save diskspace by sharing common files, if I delete the first backup, will files "linked" to the second backup appear to become deleted, but really they are not because the second backup is now "claiming" them?

Question 3: In other's experience, can I rely on Timeshift to produce a proper restore of my system if I include my home and root files too in the backup? I did a test restore before venturing too far with my new system, and everything seemed to be fine.

Question 4: It looks like installing Timeshift added a duplicate filesystem partition mirroring my extended partition. Both partitions show about 1TB in size on my 1TB drive. I did uninstall Timeshift and reboot to see if that duplicate filesystem partition would go away, but it didn't. Is there a way to safely remove that Timeshift filesystem partition if I decide to stop using Timeshift?

Thank you very much,

Kevin

Kevin Berry
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1 Answers1

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Q1: I have about a dozen TimeShift snapshots on my system. They definitely share files.

Q2: You should only delete backups using the application itself. That ensures the integrity of each snapshot.

Q3: TimeShift will create a snapshot of home if you configure it to do so. However it is a snapshot. That means if you restore from a week ago, for example, you will get exactly that. Any changes you made in home, edits of documents, new photos etc... will be overwritten and probably lost. I’m pretty sure new files will be deleted if they were added since the snapshot.

Q4: TimeShift mounts your save destination to a particular location in the file system. That means it can look like it’s duplicated but it isn’t. Just after a reboot it probably will not be mounted like that so I suggest you check. Again use the application itself to remove all backups if you choose to.

For the record I have used TimeShift for a couple of years and it has always worked perfectly. I did have an issue once when a change to another package created an infinite loop of files to backup but that was not the fault of TimeShift. I highly recommend it but if you do backup home just be conscious of what will happen.

PonJar
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