Re: What would I do without partimage?
On Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 12:48:07AM +0100, Paul Seelig wrote:
> For ntfs partitions, i prefer the more mature ntfs support of the
> ntfsprogs and the added benefit of loop mounting an NTFS image file.
> BTW, to save an image via network one can use whatever the pipe
> permits. Here are some samples from the man page:
>
> Backup an NTFS volume to a remote host, using ssh.
>
> ntfsclone --save-image --output - /dev/hda1 | \
> gzip -c | ssh host 'cat > backup.img.gz'
>
> Restore an NTFS volume from a remote host via ssh.
>
> ssh host 'cat backup.img.gz' | gunzip -c | \
> ntfsclone --restore-image --overwrite /dev/hda1 -
>
> Stream an image from a web server and restore it to a partition
>
> wget -qO - http://server/backup.img | \
> ntfsclone --restore-image --overwrite /dev/hda1 -
You can't mount an image that has been saved with --save-image.
I tried ntfsclone and it works about as fast as partimage, and it's definitely less
cumbersome that partimage; however the resulting gzipped image file from a 20GB
partition with 2GB of actual data was about 60MB larger: 840mb versus 780mb. The
partimage image was also gzipped.
I'm also going to file a bug against ntfsprogs that ntfsclone should be packaged
separately from the rest of ntfsprogs. ntfsclone is actually useful; the rest of those
programs are either unnecessary or flat dangerous. The only thing they have in common
is they involve NTFS.
The fact that ntfsclone is packaged with a tool called "fixntfs" or somethign who's man
page says "always run this after running any of the other utilities in this package
before booting or your NTFS partition will be completely destroyed" makes me feel
squeamish about ntfsclone, although as I said it's a different animal and people report
it as stable.
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