On Thu, May 07, 2026 at 10:33:06AM +0200, Hans wrote: > Hi folks, > > just a question: Is there a tool in debian, which can create partition images > of mounted harddrives?
There is a bit of a contradiction in this: while a file system is mounted [1] read/write, its backing image "on disk" is necessarily inconsistent, since changes occurring to it take some time to go from buffer cache to disk (this is why you get the performance). Many structural changes are just in RAM and end up somewhat later on "disk" (i.e. on the block device, whatever it is, see footnote). If you (re)mount read only, things are looking better. Ideally, you have a snapshotting file system (zfs, btrfs), or a snapshotting block mapping layer (LVM) beneath your file system. Then you can "freeze" a snapshot and copy that while letting the file system move on. Cheers [1] Sometimes we love being sloppy, but in this context, it helps a lot to be precise. You *mount* a *file system*. Not a "partition", not a "harddrive" or a "floppy" or a "stick". The file system is the whole machinery which structures a block device to have directories, files and all those little things we love. The block device beneath can be a whole disk, a partition on it, or an LVM (logical) volume. Or a piece of virtual memory. Or a file living in another file system: anything which can be interpreted as a long string of storage blocks. -- tomás
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