back up the entire home-directory of a notebook: one-liner that runs on command line

[thedhubs]

good day dear friends, hello to everyone, 🙂

today i want to work on the backup of a notebook:  what is wanted: hmmm - well all i want to achive is to copy just everything from my home directory to an external drive

Including the following data: 

 

• hidden files 
• documents 
• browser bookmarks and profiles 
• application settings 

to say what is needed:  important first thoughts: i do not want to copy the entire filesystem (/) no not: — that said i think that this will cause severe and serious permissions problems, So to spell it out clearly: system files are not needed, and it risks copying mounted system paths.

What i need is the entire user’s home directory, because all personal data that i am interested are inside /home/<username>

that said: all hidden files ( guess that all that stuff is quite starting with the following "sign" .) are probably included there ( as i think herein are the following datasets: browser profiles, app configs, SSH keys, etc.)

hmm  do i really need system-level settings, well i can back up only specific directories.

the main goal i want to achieve is just to copy  all stuff and everything from my home directory to an external drive

hmm - i guess that this can be done safely and fully with one command in terminal. 
that said: i think that this can be done safely and fully with one so calles "onliner command".

the question is:  hmm what is the cleanest possible  method to back up everything in my home directory (including all hidden files) before reinstalling.

assumptions on the process - ideas how to start this: 

to backup the Entire Home Directory (where everything i need is included) - i think i have to make sure my external drive is mounted

Usually it appears somewhere like:

/media/<myusername>/<drive-label>/

i think that we can verify with:

 

bash ls /media ls /media/<myusername>

 

well can i do this so: 

any ideas!?

have a great day - greetings🙂   

update  after doing some research i found out. - there are some command that support me here - and that help out..

 well regarding tar: 

tar packs all the files into a one tiny single file "archive, " which can then be compressed to save space - ant a tar file that can be very handy and easy to port over.

regarding the rsync: 

afaik the rsync will copy exact files, and besides that it can speed up by only copying what has changed - thats pretty very smart and clever. 

so i thnk that the concrete commands then would look like so: 
 

tar -cJpf /media/<the concrete username>/bkup.tar.xz /home/<username>

rsync -aHAX --progress /home/<the concrete username>/ /media/<username>/

 

.....Well that sain - i guess that i am in a very convinient and good situation-  i have now very handy commands that support the process

 

have a great day greetings

 

Edited November 19, 2025 by thedhubs