My notebook is setup for dual-boot Linux (Mint 21.3) and Windows 10, while I slowly migrate from Windows to Linux. I’ve been backing up my data from Windows to USB-Devices using a Windows-only tool.
Now, working with both systems, Linux more than Windows, I’m looking for a new cross-system backup tool and came across Kopia. The Windows NTFS partitions are permanently mounted on Linux, and as long as I need to work with Windows every now and then, my data files will reside on those NTFS partitions, only.
Does Kopia support running snapshots of directories on those NTFS file systems from Linux, and Windows alternatively, using the same repository on the very same USB device? Any thing to consider? Could data backed up while running Linux be restored while running Windows, and vice versa?.
I understand I need to keep the configuration, especially the exclude lists in synch. Anything else?
It should work no problem - you might want to explicately set hostname and user used by kopia if you want to have one set of snapshots but it is not needed from repo size perspective as deduplication will work its magic anyway.
So I tried. Took a snapshot of a UNIX path on Linux, then of some NTFS path on Windows. I had to make sure the “Connected as…” has the same value, then both snapshots, and the files backed up in them, are seen on both systems. So good, so far.
However, of course I have to say now, it cannot work to have a single snapshot and use it on Linux, and Windows alternatively. The real pathnames are different. Windows uses forward slash, and Linux backslash, but most imortantly, the “high level directory” is a Windows drive specification versus a Linux mountpoint specification.
Not a problem of Kopia!
The longterm target system is Linux, so I’ll backup only form Linux. But it is good to know, that in case of the unexpected, I would be able to access (and restore) data in the snapshots from Windows.
Thanks for that great tool