[Discuss] full disk backups

[slitt at troubleshooters.com (Steve Litt)]

On Sat, 17 Aug 2019 14:02:36 -0400
Dan Ritter <dsr at randomstring.org> wrote:

> Eric Chadbourne wrote: 
> > 
> > I've been using Kali Linux Light for my daily driver.? Works great.
> >  However I need to make full disk backups and be able to recover
> > since this is used for work.? I'm always screwing with it and if
> > it's broken I'm not getting paid those hours.
> > 
> > Any recommendations for something to use for a full disk backup and
> > easy recovery?? My first thought was dd or rsync.? However
> > Clonezilla looks pretty cool.? I remember years back one of their
> > devs being on the BLU email list. 
> 
> Several options.
> 
> 1. dd
>     pro: simple, guaranteed to copy all state
>     con: guaranteed to read and write all state
       Another con: copies everything, even empty space. Needs an even
       bigger disk to copy to. Also, not built to handle a disk with
       bad spots. ddrescue can do that.
> 
> 2. rsync
>     pro: reasonably simple, restartable, more efficient than dd
>     con: lots of small files make it slow
       I use rsync for backup. I back up to a backup server and run the
       program on that backup server,  so fast or slow doesn't matter
       that much. Rsync con: Backs up files,  not sectors,  so you need
       more for bootability on restore.

> 5. buy another machine and stop futzing with your work machine
>     pro: work machine remains stable, damage from futzing
>          limited to other machine
>     con: potentially expensive

       Sounds like an excellent idea to me, if you have the space to
       accommodate a second computer and monitor. Or put them on KVM
       switches. Why hurt your work with experimentation gone wrong. Of
       course, on the other hand, I do a lot of experiments on my Daily
       Driver Desktop, which handles all my Troubleshooters.Com work.
       Do as I say, not as I do. :-)

By the way, the following describes my backup system:

http://troubleshooters.com/lpm/200609/200609.htm

Yeah, I've been using it 13 years now. So far so good.

 
SteveT

Steve Litt 
August 2019 featured book: Twenty Eight Tales of Troubleshooting
http://www.troubleshooters.com/28