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Backup of a partition

Terminal - Backup of a partition
cd /mnt/old && tar cvf - . | ( cd /mnt/new && tar xvf - )
2009-04-30 21:03:59
User: javamaniac
Functions: cd tar
3
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Backup of a partition

Clone a partion with tar.

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Alternatives

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Terminal - Alternatives

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What others think

couldn't you do this with rsync?

I found it a few days back when I was upgrading to Ubuntu Jaunty.

check the man pages its really useful.

Comment by wrongloop 211 weeks and 5 days ago

you should add -p (--preserve-permissions) to the second tar command and do not forget, hidden files in the base dir will be omitted, you can avoid this if you use the dir name instead of the '.'.

Comment by ok 211 weeks and 5 days ago

Well, if one of the file system happens to be a live one, with mounted /tmp /proc, /sys, etc... do not forget to include the exclude flag (--exclude of -X excluded_list).

As well, in case of something going wrong (file system full, murphy), putting the whole command inside () and | tail your_log_file is a good idea as well, just so you know what went on.

Otherwise, it's my favorite fs-backup command as well.

Comment by pruneau 211 weeks and 5 days ago

Importantly for tar though you probably want the preserve (-p) option and the --one-file-system option, if you really mean to clone the *partition* in which case tar will actually do what you mean.

You're not exactly cloning the partition here, you're cloning the files on the *filesystem*. To truly clone the partition you'd have to use something like

dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sda2

which would duplicate the block-for-block on-disk layout of the original filesystem. In that case you probably want the source mounted read-only.

But still this is a good command: it shows how to juggle stdin/stdout with tar, piping, and subshells.

Comment by bwoodacre 211 weeks and 5 days ago

Your point of view

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