Backup or Persistent home and opt

When Tiny Core is installed on a USB drive, or other solid state memory, backup is designed to minimize the amount of writing to the USB drive, which results in the USB drive lasting longer.

When Tiny Core is run without persistent home and opt, and a file is saved, it is saved to RAM. It is only written to the USB drive, when backup is run, normally when shutting down Tiny Core.

Backup results in the computer taking longer to shut down and start up.

When installing to a hard drive, it is ideal to use persistent home and opt. To do this include “opt=sda1 home=sda1” in the bootloader.

This results in Tiny Core starting up and shutting down quicker.

If you install certain applications, you may want to save settings related to those applications. For example, if you install a printer, and want to save printer settings.

There are two ways to save settings.

1. The ideal method in most situations, is to make a new extension with settings. For more information, see Make Extensions for Settings.

2. Another option is to use backup. If you use backup as well as persistent home and opt, edit /opt/.filetool.lst, delete all references to the home and opt directories (in the version I am using that is everything), then add a list of files and directories you want backed up to /opt/.filetool.lst. For more information, see Backup.

If you have Tiny Core installed on a hard drive, using persistent home and opt, and make extensions for settings, you don't need to use backup.

If you have Tiny Core installed on a USB drive, using backup, and make extensions for settings and large files, you can have less in backup, which reduces the time taken to start up and shut down the computer, and lengthens the life of the USB drive.

For more information, see Make Extensions for Settings.

Tiny Core is about choices. It is up to you how you run it.

For example, you may use persistent home and opt on a USB drive, knowing that it will not last as long. USB drives are not very expensive to replace.

For more information, see Make Extensions for Settings and Backup.