On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 8:23 PM, maxim wexler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Doesn't Ghost work with Ext3? What can I do to > > recover my system without > > reinstalling from scratch? > > > > I've had success with #dd if=<partition-to-be-copied> > of=<partition-to-be-copied-to> bs=<varies> > > Is there a reason why you backup the filesystem along with the data on it? I do only minor backups... but even for anything major I would use a tool like tar or rsync and drop the filesystem metadata entirely. Also directly reading from the block device is hazardous unless you umount (or mount as readonly) the filesystem in question. This is because, the filesystem may not keep all the data synced to the disk at all points in time. Actually, even the tar/rsync method may lead to inconsistent files if the files are backed up while they are still in active use. However, this is potentially less damaging than having invalid filesystem metadata backed up because the filesystem was not in sync. If you *have to* backup an always active system, I would first create a snapshot and then back up the snapshot. That ofcourse requires a more involved disk setup using LVM. _r
