Clone/backup using clonezilla

#1

Is there a way to take a system image backup or to restore before booting into the system. Eg. Using clonezilla or a startup disk. I have used DD command but it isn’t so reliable when running a live system. I have made a clonezilla startup disk on an SD card, but it didn’t want to boot.

#2

You must decide if you want to make live copy or offline copy. If you need live copy - the solution is rsync.

If you want an offline copy dd + eventually gzip is the right choice.

I am making backup copy of my SD card in Windows by Win32DiskImager and then compress it with WinRAR. You can also use Cygwin to do the copy and 7-zip to compress it.

Dd copy is always very big and you may want to zero free space on filesystem before making such a copy to compress it better.

I am using rsync to backup all important files into mounted folder which is my pendrive:
rsync -aAXv / --delete --exclude={"/dev/*","/proc/*","/sys/*","/tmp/*","/run/*","/mnt/*","/media/*","/lost+found"} /mnt/bak

2 Likes
#3

Thanks pbies

I will check out rsync. It sounds like the option I need.