Backup your whole system to a tar file.

So you don’t have a tape drive, and don’t want to buy one? ok,
I am assuming you have another drive installed at least, if not what is the point?

su

# tar -cpf /otherdrive/backup-`date ‘+%d-%B-%Y’`.tar –directory / –exclude=proc –exclude=mnt
–exclude=cdrom –exclude=otherdrive –exclude=*/lost+found .

# /bin/chmod 600 /otherdrive/backup-`date ‘+%d-%B-%Y’`.tar
# gzip -9 /otherdrive/backup-`date ‘+%d-%B-%Y’`.tar