[ale] Backup Nirvana - bootable backup

[John]

Two identically sized disks.

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb  bs=102400

Cloned. OS agnostic.  Gets everything (including partition table, mbr, 
and unused disk areas).

How you connect the 2nd disk is up to you, I use eSATA directly on the 
laptop.  Key thing is to boot from other media, like a flash USB OS, not 
either disk.  This isn't my backup strategy, just my OS cloning one.  
The "outputfile" can be on another machine, over the network, by 
combining pipes and ssh. GigE is nice. Once on the other machine, I 
create a text file that shows the exact command used to create the file 
so restores are easy to figure out.  I've used this on 3.5" disks that 
weren't the same size, provided the target was larger. Worked there 
too.  Of course, we all know to keep the OS partitions as small as 
possible and place data on different partitions so the clone stuff 
doesn't need to be too large.  This is an easy way to migrate to larger 
disks when needed, then use gparted to expand partitions.

Cloning does not replace incremental backups or a normal backup 
strategy, since the source can be infected the day before you clone and 
hadn't realized the problem yet.


On 01/16/2011 11:26 PM, Ron Frazier wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I wanted to pass along a preliminary report on an amazing backup
> experience I had today.  I've been using PC's pretty much ever since
> they were invented for consumer use, and backing them up most of that
> time.  It's always a pain, and doing a restore is a royal pain even with
> a backup.
>
> My backup strategy has 2 parts:
  ...