What are we doing for disk imaging theses days?
dd ?
Rather use
dd_rescueas it’ll retry if it encounters any reading issue.No need for all these new-fangled tools when good ol’
dddoes the job just fine. (Though they certainly reduce the chance of accidentally nuking the wrong disk).
Ddeez nuts
Ones I have used: GNOME Disks’ create and restore image features. Possibly Mint’s
mintstickfor writing a distro’s.isoout to a USB stick. I am not too sure on that.I assume old-school
ddstill works as well, which might be a better option for scripted backups or minimal systems.Clonezilla and Rescuezilla The Clonezilla method takes a bit time to get used to (but I like it). Rescuezilla comes with a GUI.
Clonezilla has been my goto backup / restore solution for years. I’ve used it on everything from RaspberryPi SD Cards to a Dell Poweredge server with PERC RAID controller (because some fool setup the wrong RAID parameters).
I didn’t know about Rescuezilla though… so thanks for that.
To add to this. Take a look at the fog server project. It allows you to PXE boot and pull and push images in a automated way.
Take a look at the fog server project.
Thanks. https://fogproject.org
DD is the best for 1-1 copying, but I like to use CloneZilla, because it can compress and encrypt the images.
Gnome disk utility.
I like it so much I have it on my KDE boxes too.
Yeah I just started using Linux half a year ago and tried a few distros and DEs, but GNOME “disks” is just the easiest way to set up auto mounting and is available on any package manager I came across so far.
It crashes for me when I try to write a image
Definitely ddrescue. Unlike traditional dd, it can deal with failing drives, it’s operation is resumable, and has some other features that’s helpful. I would recommend using it even if your drive is fine.
What it produces is a byte for byte copy just like dd.cpAfter learning how to install medicat i discovered ventoy. With ventoy you can copy and paste how ever many bootable iso files you like into it and run them all from the same drive/partition from a selectable boot menu. It’s amazing, I won’t be using dd anymore for boot disks.
Careful where you point that thing. I unintentionally disrupted someone’s life by introducing them to ventoy. Now they have been distrohopping like crazy because of how easy it is.
😀
The native tools
I use FSArchiver. There’s nice list on Archwiki.
pv. It’s just cat, with a progress meter.
cp.
Ventoy. I love it so much, being able to have more than one bootable iso and storage on a usb.
Although, it is slower to boot the more folders you have, since it scans all folders, but this is configurable
I use nix-shell to get the ventoy cli for when I need to install it to a usb stick.
@uhmbah
I use gnome-disks.
Then according to this german article:
gnulinux.ch/raw-images-verklei…
I reduce the images Partition to the smallest possible.
edit it’s content with kpartx and remove cache, tmp and trashbin
and reduce the disk and image size with pishrink.
