PartImage (and similar & derivative pkgs) add intelligent functionality like volume spanning (back up an 80Gb volume to 10 8Gb DVD-Rs, or to 2Gb files on a FAT filesystem), only backing up used sectors (particularly helpful on drives with tons of free disk space), unicast and/or multicast over-the-wire (for when you can't easily mount the remote filesystem), and automatic partition re-sizing (transfer an image of an 80Gb HDD onto a 300Gb HDD or a 40Gb HDD [as long as there's enough room]).

The main advantages come with scenarios *other* than simple disk replacement or cloning to an identical disk, esp. disaster-recovery archiving, mass cloning, etc.

-Adam

------Original Message------ From: Lange, John Sender: roundtable-bounces@muug.mb.ca To: Roundtable, MUUG Subject: Re: [RndTbl] Open Source Backup/cloning to USB HDD Sent: Oct 27, 2009 15:36

Just out of curiosity, what is it that these various programs that people have recommended do with regard to imaging that "dd" doesn't?

I've never looked at any of these in any great detail but so far as I can see they all add complexity while reducing functionality.

Image a disk? dd

Backup a file system? rsync

to tape? tar

to remote? ssh (or scp)

scheduled? put any of the above in cron

That's all you need. What am I missing?

Regards,