How to partition a disk for a convenient lubuntu backup?

Question

System administration

Good day!
Yesterday I thought about backing up the openwrt router and successfully copied the full system image to the phone, after which I thought that I most likely had something wrong with the lubuntu partitions on the computer.
Because I caught myself on the next reinstallation of lubuntu 18 with many hours of installation of dependencies that I still pick up, I make a mistake and because of which I have to reinstall the system.
The idea came to mind that it would be nice to find a tool with which you could make a backup and save it to the cloud (for example, by starting with live usb) But why, of course, you need to know how to backup and how to prepare sections in advance , which will be easier and faster to backup.
now, after some settings, if you go to pcmanfm in "/" at the bottom it says "free space:198 Gb(Total 227 Gb)" while allocating 6 Gb to swap I don't have the wisdom of conscious splitting .. partitions? Perhaps I don’t need the idea of ​​sending backups to the cloud at all and can I get by with my only information storage device inside the PC? Do I need to split partitions in some other way than by default and how to split them for convenient backups?

Answer 1

Disk partitioning is very individual, depending on what the personal PC is used for. I settled on ArchLinux, and the scheme is: SSD 120 GB under /, 250 GB - /storage (RAID1 software, for important and permanent data), SWAP-none. I have been using this method for many years.
Why reinstall the system every time it crashes, when you can mount to the system and fix what you need. Linux is not Windows, it does not need to be reinstalled if it crashes.
For everything else, I use Yandex WEBDEV on 1Tb (used as a file dump, and for quickly sharing the desired file).

Answer 2

If you make a non-sector copy and back up all the data - it makes no difference how the disk is partitioned - the time spent will be proportional to the amount of information.
Usually /home is made a separate partition, which prevents you from backing up only the /home directory on the shared linux partition.
Also, /tmp and /var are taken out on highly loaded systems on separate partitions, but this is so that the entire disk does not overflow with temporary files or logs in emergency situations.
Having thought - if you don't understand why you need a particular partition - trust the automatic one or make one partition plus swap
Well, you can make backups from inside the running OS - you don't have to use some kind of live cd.