On 23/07/12 19:24, Jarry wrote:
On 23-Jul-12 16:29, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
On 22/07/12 20:18, Jarry wrote:
Hi,
I want to backup my whole hard-drive (8 partitions) with:
# dd if=/dev/sda | gzip > /path/image.gz
In order to achieve good compression level I'd like to wipe
out all empty space with zeros. How can I do that?
That's the wrong way to do it. You should use a tool that only copies
the data, and then also backup the partition table.
Or use partimage/clonezilla like Neil mentioned which does all that
automatically.
I know those tools. Unfortunatelly, they do not support
"smart copying" (only used sectors) if software raid is used.
So I'm back on the beginning: I can clone only the whole
drive (all sectors). No matter if I use dd, clonezila or
partimage...
There's good ol' tar too :-) I usually use that one, or rsync if I need
to clone rather than back-up and compress. Those two have never let me
down yet.
