--On 31 October 2005 12:23 +0100, Abel TalaverC3n Estevez wrote:
If I make the backup with 'dd if=/dev/wd0c of=/image bs=512' the image is a file of about 2 GB because the hard disk is of 40 GB. But with a 'du -sh /' I can see that all files are only 221 MB.
The free space probably contains old data, which may not be compressible. For each filesystem, dd /dev/zero into a file until you run out of space, then rm the file. I think I learned the trick from flashboot or some similar toolkit.
N.B. Don't count on being able to restore a dd image to another machine or HD.
