Re: Cult of Unix

On Thu, 1/16/2025 3:48 PM, Hank Rogers wrote:

vallor wrote:

On Thu, 16 Jan 2025 10:34:01 -0500, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote in
<vmb8t8$3id01$1@dont-email.me>:
>

On Thu, 1/16/2025 12:03 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Tue, 14 Jan 2025 20:05:34 -0600, Hank Rogers wrote:
>

I think people are better off to get some type of imaging software ...

>
On Linux systems, rsync works well. It’s essentially a bulk
file-copying utility. That’s all you need to backup/restore Linux
systems.
>
>

With Macrium, I can back up FAT32, NTFS, ExFAT, and ... EXT4. This means
when I image a dual-boot disk drive here, it is a *complete* image. I
can restore it to a brand new hard drive,
and it boots as if nothing had happened.
>
As long as my Linux installs use EXT4 for slash, I'm fine and one
imaging tool does everything for me.
>
The imaging is "smart". in that busy clusters and busy inodes are backed
up, not white space. If I have 20GB of files on a 1TB EXT4, the backup
image is a bit bigger than 20GB but not by much. Similarly, if I back up
20GB of files on a 1TB NTFS, the output is not much bigger than 20GB.
And the NTFS and EXT4 can sit in the same MRIMG file,
there is no segregation involved and separate files for them. It's all
in a single file.
>
Macrium even backs up the 16MB Microsoft Reserved, which has no file
system. It does that using the equivalent of "dd", but it does not throw
a wobbly and complain about what it has been asked to do. It puts that
back on a restore.
>
Details and automation, are the key to push-button success.
>
    Paul

>
I'm sure Macrium Reflect is a fine bit of software, but I wonder
about the wisdom of imaging a mounted partition.  I think the only
way to do that safely would be to boot to a USB stick -- that way,
you aren't trying to image mounted filesystems.
>

 
It works just fine on a running windows system. It uses Volume shadow service. I'm pretty sure most other backup software can also work while windows is running.
 

They *all* use that.
That's because setting a shadow is so easy,
even home users can do one manually.

You can freeze a copy of C: for example, and
run a Robocopy over it.

*******

$ wbAdmin start backup -backupTarget:D: -allCritical         # "Windows 7 Backup.exe"   run time 3 minutes.

Retrieving volume information...
This will back up (EFI System Partition),W11HOME(C:),(\?\Volume{c3bc5ab1-c5f0-4dae-838c-751ef868e237}\) to D:.
The backup operation to D: is starting.
Creating a shadow copy of the volumes specified for backup...                    <=== VSS (C: partition)
Creating a shadow copy of the volumes specified for backup...                    <=== VSS (Recovery partition )
Creating a backup of volume (EFI System Partition) (100.00 MB), copied (0%).
...
The backup of volume (EFI System Partition) (100.00 MB) completed successfully.
Creating a backup of volume W11HOME(C:), copied (0%).
...
Creating a backup of volume W11HOME(C:), copied (95%).
The backup of volume W11HOME(C:) completed successfully.
The backup of volume  (649.00 MB) completed successfully.
Summary of the backup operation:
------------------

The backup operation successfully completed.
The backup of volume (EFI System Partition) (100.00 MB) completed successfully.
The backup of volume W11HOME(C:) completed successfully.
The backup of volume  (649.00 MB) completed successfully.
Log of files successfully backed up:
C:\WINDOWS\Logs\WindowsBackup\Backup-16-01-2025_22-52-06.log

$ dir *.vhdx

 Directory of D:\WindowsImageBackup\WALLACE\Backup 2025-01-16 225206

Thu, 01/16/2025  05:55 PM    72,240,594,944 0bd6166a-0836-4041-891c-792df2c72abd.vhdx  <=== C: partition
Thu, 01/16/2025  05:55 PM       620,756,992 c3bc5ab1-c5f0-4dae-838c-751ef868e237.vhdx  <=== Recovery partition
Thu, 01/16/2025  05:55 PM        60,817,408 Esp.vhdx                                   <=== FAT32 boot materials

It's too bad the restore didn't run smooth like that.
But that's just to demonstrate that programs use shadows.
Even disk2vhd from Russinovich, I think that sets a shadow too.

   Paul