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I am converting my Windows 7 to an Arch Linux machine, and was wondering what the safest way to backup my files for use on Linux was.

I don't want to use the Windows Backup and Restore facility as this creates a system image from which it is hard to restore files outside of Windows.

My current plan is to just sync both the hard drives of my machines onto an external drive using SyncToy. I wanted to ask if someone can see a flaw in this plan or recommend a better change management plan, before I go ahead and wipe out my Windows machine and load in Linux.

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  • How about rsync? It's normally available for Linux, but there's a Windows port called cwRsync. It's a smart file sync tool.
    – gronostaj
    Commented Jul 6, 2014 at 12:57
  • many found this useful, i use this exactly for your scenario.. serverfault.com/questions/610218/…
    – tike
    Commented Jul 6, 2014 at 12:58
  • ZIP is slow, but gives good compression and is completely accessible from both systems, but it will be more manageable if you create a number of ZIP files, say, one each for \Windows, \Program Files, \Program Files (x86), \ProgramData, \Users, etc, not forgetting any root files. I would never rely on a single back-up, so this would be additional to any other technique you might use. If it is a valid option, I would try to keep the W7 partition available for copying files into Linux, at least until I had got most of the files I felt I needed.
    – AFH
    Commented Jul 6, 2014 at 13:14

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Since you only need to copy your data, you should copy your pictures and music to CD or DVD (so they no longer need to stay on your hard drive) and any other data should fit on a USB thumb drive.

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