Imagine you spent days tweaking a system until you finally have everything working perfectly. The partitions are exactly as you need them, the operating systems are installed, and everything is working to your satisfaction. Before you actually put the system to productive use, it might be a good idea to back up your dream machine so that you can quickly restore the system if disaster strikes.

The open source Mondo backup utility can back up a complete operating system configuration. Mondo can back up your whole Linux installation or even an entire hard disk – including partitioning and the boot manager – onto a DVD, CD, or external NFS server. You can use Mondo to make an easy-to-restore copy of your Linux system. One of the goals of Mondo is to allow changes to the underlying system – such as the hardware or the filesystem – and still preserve the previous system configuration.