[Pre-Install] Backup pre-upgrade 25.10, with external HDD, help

[kubuntutero]

Hi everyone! I bought an external hard drive, a 1TB Seagate STGX, to back up my existing files... I read somewhere, via AI, that I should format it first (to Ext4), but from what I can see, it works normally when I connect it; I see the files it came with originally. What would you recommend I do?

[claydoh]

You *probably* are OK with the existing formatting, but it does greatly matter what it is formatted with and what you are backing up.

If you are creating compressed archives like zip or tar.gz, it should be fine.

If you are just copying files from your home dir to restore after a clean install, that *probably* is fine, too.

The problem area can be where ownership and permissions come into play. As well as filesystem features in Linux (ext4) you may not have on the filesystem on your external drive (most especially if it is exFAT).

To be safest, I do suggest using ext4 specifically for this job. Windows won't be able to see this, so you'd need to reformat it back to ntfs or exFAT to be able to use it more universally.


KDE Partition Manager is the tool to use: