I can do a full backup of my 250GB drive (about 230GB occupied) in about 2-1/4hrs with this command:

Code:

tar czf music.tgz /public/music

It has the advantage over your script in that it doesn't require an second identically sized partition to copy it to.

Another advantage is that it will use less space than using dd.

Quote:

Feel free to offer suggestions
brain@removed by reborg

Code:

#! /bin/bash 
# name: drive-image.sh, disk image copy script
# by:   Jan Zumwalt - www.neatinfo.com 
# ver:  01/01/09
# remarks:
# -e = enable interpretation of backslash codes
# -n = disable newline at end of line (i.e. user input prompt)

IMAGE_FROM=hda  # the drive or partition we will copy (save). 
IMAGE_TO=hdc    # the target (were it will be saved)

I find it very strange that you hard-code the partitions in an interactive script.

Code:

OFF=$'\e[0m'

The yellow text is illegible in my terminal windows.

Bizarre!

Why do you suppress the newline and then add one?

What's wrong with a simple echo?

Code:

echo

Why bother displaying all the partitions when you don't offer the user a way to select any of them?

####snip####
read ANSWER
   case $ANSWER in 
      [1])

You don't need the brackets.

Code:

   case $ANSWER in 
      1)

And you don't need to redirect every line. Either use printf:

Code:

 
           printf "%s\n" \
              "[Desktop Entry]"                 \
              "Comment="                        \
       #### snip ####
              "X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false"       \
              "X-KDE-Username="                 > "dr-image.desktop"
           chmod  ugo+x "dr-image.desktop" # make shortcut executable

Or braces:

Code:

           {
           echo "[Desktop Entry]"
           echo "Comment="
           echo "Comment[en_US]="
       #### snip ####
           echo "X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false"
           echo "X-KDE-Username="
           }  > "dr-image.desktop"