You really need to get into the habit of doing regular updates.
I generally back up my RPi once a week immediately before doing the update/upgrade thing. This means that if a weekly update should bite me, its easy to restore the RPi to its previous state.
I use rsync for the backup since its fast. Since my RPI is on my LAN I can back up to a removable hard drive on my house server as part of a general all-systems weekly backup, but you could equally well back up to directly attached storage, e.g. a second SD card in a SD card reader or a USB hard drive. The only difference is that you'd start by using dd to duplicate the RPI's two partitions onto the backup storage and then use rsync for subsequent backups.
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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
Thanks for that definitely required nudge. I was very surprised at the amount of upgrading that occurred, it must be a rapidly developing system. I definitely must back up my system and I have a USB 'My passport' drive which I hope will serve the purpose. I have also bought a B+ so now need a micro SD card for that.
Malcolm
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T M Smith
Using an Iyonix and RISC OS 5.20 in the North Riding of Yorkshire
Should do the job though you might need a powered hub to provide enough electrical grunt to spin up the disk.
No having the card sticking out is definitely a big plus.
I got the same effect on my B by buying a Pi-specific micro-SD card adapter. Its a chunk of PCB with a micro-SD card socket on it - the microSD is mounted across the adapter so that there's no way it can pop out when the adapter is installed. The SD card rails are in the way. The edge of the adapter is only extends 2-3mm beyond the edge of the RPi board, which makes things nice and neat. The only problem has been that overall the adapter is enough thicker than an SD card that I had to lengthen the pillars in my Wafer case to let the adapter fit between the Wafer's bottom plate and the RPi.
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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
I have a quite old My Passport, which is a 3.5 drive and has its own main PSU, so can be used with the Pi directly, although I use a hub. Even a 2.5" former laptop drive in a USB enclosure needs a powered hub to work.
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