On my current laptop, I have installed the /home in a separate partition, in the case I need to reinstall the OS, without having to backup and restore files and configurations.
My laptop is having hardware issues and my company bought me another, how can I backup the /home partition on the old laptop and restore to the new one?
It is a matter of copying all files in the home directory, including the hidden files, while preserving linux file permissions (at least for the configuration files). Once the copy is made, check the ownership. If the user/group on the new system has a different UID than on the old system, you will need to adjust user and group ownerships.
I would be using rsync for that, but also cp is possible with the appropriate options set to preserve file properties. edit User Raj posted yet a third possibility using tar. An advantage is that this third method does not require that the target drive supports linux file permissions.
If this sounds difficult and exceeds your technical skills, then consider just copying your personal user data. That data is personal and not replacable. Hence it is the most valuable. You can then just reconfigure your new system where needed as you use it.
