Re: Backing up all files on hdd - dd'ing
--- Alvin Oga <aoga@Maggie.Linux-Consulting.com> escribió:
>
> On Mon, 19 May 2003, [iso-8859-1] Roberto Sanchez wrote:
>
> > --- Willem-Jan Meijer <meyer3@chello.nl> escribió: > Hello all,
> > >
> > > My hdd is producing noises I don't like so I think it's time to make a
> > > backup. I want to backup all files, directories and so on, something like
> > > norton ghost for M$. So that after my hdd dies I only have to replace the
> > > backup and that everyting is like before the crash.
> > >
> > > How can I do this?
> > >
> >
> > If you have another drive that is larger than the one your system is on,
> you
> > can do something like this (substituting for your corresponding
> partitions):
> >
> > dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdb1
> >
> > or, to save an image if somewhere, dd if=/dev/hda1
> > of=/some/other/drive/file.ext
>
> magic ... good idea ... to keep a separate image too ( elsewhere )
>
>
> problem w/ simple dd'ing
> eg. dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdb1
>
> a. if hda1 and hdb1 is different sizes .. you're dead
> unless you like fiddling to make it fit/work
> since the other option was norton ghost, i suspect
> you want it done easily/trivially and that it works
>
If you notice, I made the assumption that he is going to use a new drive that
is _larger_ than his old drive.
> b. if all files on hda1 was good today ... and you dd'd it, than
> over the next day/weeks ... things get worst and nosier...
>
> and along the way.. you keep dd'ing your supposed new
> files you wanna keep .. along w/ the rest of your files,
> you might be saving the new files, but with a degrading/dying
> disks, you have a high probability your good data on backup is
> being wiped out by the worsen'ing bad disks' dd'ing
>
> if you are like most people w/ 40GB or 100GB or 1TB of disks
> space and only using 10% of it... why are you wasting 90% of your
> time dd'ing "unsused" space to backup ??
>
When you quoted me you forgot to include my last line:
"Swap the second drive into the spot of the first and toss the old drive."
If there is a good possibility that the drive will fail (and strange noises
are a strong indicator) then I would simply quit using the drive, unless it
contained worthless data. If the data is so worthless that there is no
concern about it being on a potentially failing drive, then why waste time
backing up in the first place?
> c. find | tar or equivalent is 10x better/faster/easier than dd'ing
>
> == use incremental backups ... and multiple copies of it and never
> overwrite last weeks or last months data, unless oyu are willing
> to forever lose it .. ( ie.. you know your current system is clean and
> up to date with no missing inodes of files )
>
Again, good for normal backup procedures (it is what I use at home), but he
said he wants to ghost a failing drive. If you dd it, instead of tar'ing it,
you can also capture all the MBR and other stuff that will eliminate the
need to do any setup, just "plug and play."
> c ya
> alvin
>
-Roberto
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