Re: [tlug] rsync vs dd [was Tlug Digest, Vol 14, Issue 23]

["Erin D. Hughes" <erin-hughes@??>]

Tribble Phillip J SrA 374 LRS/LGRTT wrote:
> Good Morning,
>
> Does anyone know a good way to backup a hard drive? dd if=/dev/had
> of=/dev/hdc will make a image exactly the size of my hard drive. Is
> there a way to use DVD and make the image small?
>
>   
Philip,

I am not sure what you are trying to accomplish here.
Do you mean you want to compress the entire contents of the HD and then 
write it to a DVD?

dd will copy the hd from one location to another exactly as is same size.
If your looking to copy it and  have a  compressed  version  for use 
later ... say writing to a DVD  you could use  rsync  with the -z option 
and that will compress your data.  I am not 100% on the compression 
format but  you could do something like:
rsync -avz / /tmp

Which would copy your root file assuming you have the permission and the 
space to the /tmp folder.
I would also suggest not copying the proc/ folder because of the fact 
that running process are there including your rsync process and it will 
just keep copying the instance of itself till it eats up all your disc 
space. So add  --exclude=/proc and you will be good.

This isn't the only way but I think it is a step in the right 
direction.  If you have a question you could always ask the man.

#man rsync
<snip>
from the rsync man page

rsync -avz foo:src/bar /data/tmp

      This would recursively transfer all files from the directory 
src/bar  on
      the  machine  foo into the /data/tmp/bar directory on the local 
machine.
      The files are transferred in "archive" mode, which ensures that 
symbolic
      links,  devices, attributes, permissions, ownerships, etc. are 
preserved
      in the transfer.  Additionally, compression will be used to  
reduce  the
      size of data portions of the transfer.
</snip>