UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi guys i m finding a tool that is similar to working of norton ghost and acronis true image.

My basic purpose of doing this is to take full system level backup of my linux machine.

Will it work smooth considering different file types and distributions like debian and linux?

Do i need to download different files for different distributions?

You can try dd command.

Usage:
dd if=/what/to/copy of=/where/to/copy

I would like to copy entire disk image in compressed format so that i can store it on the same harddisk.

Is it possible in linux?

Hi,
dd is a tool to basically write the contents of a device, such as a hard disk, byte for byte to a file. And it must be an inactive device (read-only or not mounted at all). And the resulting file must be located on another device. It is by it's design slow in the sense that it doesn't care if the byte is used in a file or not. It doesn't care about file systems, unused space or compression. And it must be restored to a device identical in size (and possibly larger).

The free software closest to ghost and similar that I have seen is g4u, g4u - Harddisk Image Cloning for PCs, and Clonezilla, Clonezilla.

I would recommend You to have a look at them.

Best regards

/Lakris

In a different partition, I assume? You could compress it by piping it through gzip(better but slower) or lzop(faster but worse ratio). Special-purpose tools to compress it more intelligently depend on the filesystems involved.