Create System Snapshot in Linux Mint using TimeShift

by Abdelrahman Reda · January 9, 2019

Transfer Windows and Installed Data to Another Hard Drive

If you often make changes to the settings of the Linux Mint operating system or install various programs, no matter for what purpose, then most likely you want to be able to roll back in case of any system failure, i.e. restore the system to a certain point in time before your actions, which caused this failure, it may be incorrect settings or an installed application.

Install TimeShift in Linux Mint

You should install TimeShift manually, so please open the Terminal and type the following commands.

sudo apt-add-repository -y ppa:teejee2008/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install timeshift

If you are launching the TimeShift snapshot tool for the first time, you will immediately launch a wizard that will help you configure the application to create snapshots of the system.

Create System Snapshot

1. First, select the type of images, if you have an Ext4 file system, then select the first type “RSYNC”, and if you use the BTRFS file system, then select the item with the same name and click “Next“.

2. Then you need to specify a place for storing snapshots, more precisely, a disk partition, it is better to specify not a system partition, but one with more space.

It is even recommended to store pictures on separate external disks, for especially important systems, this is, of course, correct. Select and click “Next“.

3. Then, we are offered to set up a schedule for creating snapshots, for example, daily or once a week, this feature allows you to automatically create snapshots of the Linux Mint system on an ongoing basis.

Here you can also specify how many snapshots should be stored, i.e., for example, if you specify 5, then when 6 snapshots are taken, the very first one will be deleted, thus the tool will store the 5 most recent snapshots, which allows you to control space taken by disk images and click “Next.”

4. Then we can see the settings, with the help of which we can indicate that snapshots need to include the user’s home directories, since this feature is not used by default, because many user files change over time, and in the case of recovery we can lose these correct changes, and of course, if you include all user files in a snapshot, the size of the snapshot can be very large.

Therefore, it’s up to you to decide if you want — turn it on; if you don’t want it, leave it by default and click “Next“.