Sure, if my active drives died after this swap, and I had to restore from the old, now backup, drive, I’d be back at the operational state I was at the time of the backup.

That tracks.

It still doesn’t run anything tho. It’s just a drive. It doesn’t house an os or anything, just files that aren’t restricted in any way.

[–] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

IMHO there is no point backing up an OS drive, just rebuild it*.

Data is the important thing to back up because you usually can't regenerate it.

* the corollary here is that you've backed up the configuration required to rebuild the OS.

[–] CentipedeFarrier@piefed.social 4 points 2 days ago

I wouldn’t, I keep all of my data separate from my OS drive entirely so I can reformat or install a new OS whenever I feel like.. nasty old habit from bootleg windows 7 well beyond its age, when reformatting every 6 months was good hygiene, before I found Linux.. but gave me great data management insight.