backup snapshot

[Michael D. Setzer II]

Not a snapshot, but there are various programs that can do a bare image of 
the system and it works with Windows and LInux. They can be done at the 
partition level or the entire disk.

I am the current maintainer of the G4L project, and there is also GNU and 
Clonezilla that can do similar things. 

With my classroom lab that has systems with 500G disks with windows 7 and 
Fedora. I have a 160G W7 partition, and make an image of it to another 
partition that is about 24G in size. Takes about 12 minutes to make image, 
and about 10 minutes to restore. Have an option on the grub menu that can 
automatically, restore it, so if students mess up windows, it can be quickly 
restored to the previous image. Use NTFSCLONE option for the windows.

Similar process can be done with Linux, but since it has multiple partitions, 
one needs to do an image of each one, or one can do a full disk image, but it 
has to be made to another device like external disk or ftp server.

Another recommendation, unlike NTFSCLONE, which only backs up used 
data, the raw method will be much more effictive if the unused space on each 
partition is cleared (Nulls written to sectors). Program has options to do this, 
and then make images of each partition or the whole disk.Does take time 
since it has to read every sector, but image is much smaller with 
compression.

I have gotten even better speeds by using USB3 128G  flash. Using the USB 
3 flash, the same windows partition can be reimaged in about 4 1/2 minutes 
using USB 3 port. Takes about 8 minutes in a USB 2 port. Single hard disk 
takes longer, since it has to read and write from same device. The time to 
create the image is about the same, since the compression process seems to 
be the bottle neck there. 

I generally always, make images of critical machines, and home machine, so 
that if something goes wrong, I can quickly get a machine back and running 
to a known state. One could just backup the /boot, and / and maybe /home 
partitions depending on setup, and restore them. 

The G4L also, has a program calles fsarchiver that is a filelevel backup 
program that works with Linux, but I included it as a request of a user, and 
have time limited testing, in which it worked fine, but prefer the bare metal 
options.

So, not sure if that is the solution you are looking for. 

On 7 Aug 2015 at 21:56, Diogene Laerce wrote:

To:	users at lists.fedoraproject.org
From:	Diogene Laerce <me_buss777 at yahoo.fr>
Subject:	backup snapshot
Date sent:	Fri, 7 Aug 2015 21:56:09 +0200
Send reply to:	me_buss777 at yahoo.fr,
	Community support for Fedora users <users at lists.fedoraproject.org>

> Hi,
> 
> After a sad experience with a system update, I would like to ask
> if there is a software on Fedora or more generally on Linux
> which would allow me to make a complete snapshot of the system ?
> 
> Something as easy of use as the snapshot feature in VirtualBox
> would be great.. But near would do as well.
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> -- 
> “One original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings.”
> “Le vrai n'est pas plus sûr que le probable.”
> 
>                                               Diogene Laerce
> 
> 
> 


+----------------------------------------------------------+
  Michael D. Setzer II -  Computer Science Instructor      
  Guam Community College  Computer Center                  
  mailto:mikes at kuentos.guam.net                            
  mailto:msetzerii at gmail.com
  http://www.guam.net/home/mikes
  Guam - Where America's Day Begins                        
  G4L Disk Imaging Project maintainer 
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l/
+----------------------------------------------------------+

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