[plug] Backing up a system partition

[Michael Hunt]

Hiya all,

Thanks for the advise on symbolic link v's fstab entries. Will be going down
the fstab entry for sure.

Just a quick question about backing up a system partition. On the machine in
question I have two disks with my main / (root partition being on the first
disk, and all my data being on the second. My second disk has enough space
on it (and I have set it up during install) to keep a backup copy of the /
partition in case the first (and older of the two disks) fails.

My idea is that if the old disk croaks I can change the IDE cable over,
install Lilo on the mba and modify some fstab entries and the system would
be back up.  I was wondering if:

1. This simple approach is to good to be true and I am missing something
*grin*
2. That a cron job (say midnight's on Sundays as the root partition doesn't
change that much) that copies the root partition to my backup partition
would work. (Does a copy follow down directories mounted on other partitions
?)

Thanks for all your help so far

Michael Hunt