A image of my Linux Drive?

If my drive is a TB, but the whole drive isn’t filled with data, it will just shrink the unused part right?

That depends on what tool you’re using and what you are making an image of. An image of your drive is an image of your drive, regardless of whether those blocks contain usable data or just zeroes.

1 Like

Will Gparted make a image, so I can move Linux to a new drive, or would another tool be better? I want a exact copy so I can put it on the drive & boot up like I always had it on the drive?

I think gparted would be able to do that, but I’ve never done it myself, so I don’t really know. :man_shrugging:

The big thing is I have no idea how close to going my Drive is, besides Linux doing not really sure what it is either cleaning or repair on recent boots, prob. a few weeks everything is fine. Thus is good.

What you could do is to use clonezilla or other backup tools to move from one drive to the other. Else rsync and borg can be used as well.

Rescuezilla is an easy to use backup/restore solution.

1 Like

Clonezilla/Rescuzilla work fine, but just to be safe, make sure you know how to restore GRUB after you clone or restore an image.

The danger with cloning drives is that something may get mis-copied…something critical and the drive will not be recognized. This happened to me.

You need a plan for that. Right before the cloning process, do a Timeshift backup to a portable USB in case of this emergency. And …of course this happened… Sigh.

I booted to the Manjaro thumb drive and did a Timeshift restore this way. All that said, I hope it does not happen to you. :slight_smile:

I have no other drive but the one I am timeshifting. Not sure it has enough free spacer. How much does a timeshift shrink? GRUB should be fine the Linux drive is #2 in my sys. Cool, the Timeshift saved.

Not even a thumb drive?

A tiny 2 Gig, but I had enough space left on the drive.

1 Like