How to format? I have a couple of Linux boxes that I would like to regularly backup to a 5 TB external drive. It seems like it would be a good idea to format that drive with ext4. Can I just do that with gparted? The drive comes with NTFS format. Are there any issues I should know about? Which directories to back up? What really needs to be backed up? I guess if the system totally failed I'd install Linux (Ubuntu) again. Of course /home is needed, but /usr/local and /opt often have programs I've installed and /etc will have a bunch of settings. I guess /var can have some important stuff. Are crontabs stored in /var? Which software to use for backup? I guess I want only to have in backup what is on the originating drive. So if I have deleted a file, I want it to be deleted on the backup drive, too. I assume rsync can do this. Would this be correct?: rsync -av --update --delete /home /usr/local /etc /var /opt /media/me/back TIA! Mike