Cloning and restoring partitions using GParted

Question

Using Ubuntu 22.04 (dual booting with Windows 10). Boot partition is UEFI (GPT) on an SSD drive.

I want to test some changes to the system (including upgrading to 24.04), but I want a "fail safe" backup that I can simply drop into place and be able to go right back to what I am using now without having to mess around with uninstalling, worrying about potential changes in file systems, etc.

Is it possible (and is it reasonable) to back up full partitions (specifically the EFI Boot partition, the "/" partition, and the "/home" partition) to removable (USB stick) media using GParted, then simply copy them back into place on the original drive if needed? Am I likely to run into any problems with the EFI Boot partition and Windows dual boot by doing this? Note that I do not intent to change the size of any partition, and I am assuming that cloning the partition, then copying it back (in both cases using GParted) will not force me to move the partition to a new location....

I will make no changes to the Windows partitions or setup during this period, only to Ubuntu, so I am hoping that simply copying the partitions through GParted for backup and restore will not affect the dual boot, but better to ask first and hopefully someone will have relevant knowledge or experience to say definitively. I know that, at the very least, upgrading from 22.04 to 24.04 will likely update the version of GRUB installed on the EFI Boot partition, which is why I am including that in the backup and restore sets.

Any and all advice is welcome.

PS: I know there are "faster" ways of backing up the data than using GParted to copy the entire partition(s), but I would rather be able to just copy the old partitions back into place and pick up where I left off - and I have plenty of space on the removable media for these partition copies.

---- Edit ---- PPS: I may have confused the issue through interchanging the terms "copy" and "clone". The correct term - at least insofar as the GParted menu system is concerned - is "copy" in all cases. Apologies for any confusion.

Answer 1

Edit: According to this post https://superuser.com/questions/1628071/how-to-clone-a-partitionGparted may be able to clone the partition.

The Authors assumption and thoughts are:

"dd would usually be the go-to tool for cloning tasks, but I don't think it can create new partitions.

Clonezilla can copy partitions and it will even handle the partitioning, but it requires me to select (and thus overwrite) and existing partition which is kind of annyoing.

GParted has a Copy/Paste mechanism, but the buttons are greyed out most of the time for some reasons."

End Edit

With Gparted https://gparted.org/ you can manage partitions. Gparted is not used much for cloning. Also there is a manual https://gparted.org/documentation.php

The two apps widely used for cloning:

dd https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dd-command-linux/

Clonezilla https://clonezilla.org/. Clonezilla may be easier to understand.

Ofcourse as long as the usb disk has enough space it can hold the clone https://clonezilla.org/fine-print-live-doc.php?path=./clonezilla-live/doc/03_Disk_to_disk_clone/08-target-disk.doc#08-target-disk.doc.