On Wed, 23 Apr 2014 16:13:13 Craig Sanders wrote:
dd would perform an exact byte-by-byte duplicate of the *entire* disk *every* single time you performed the backup. rsync only backs up the files that have changed since the last backup.
One thing that DD is good for is the boot loader. For a machine with a single disk I make /boot the first partition on the disk and make it a primary partition. Then I use dd to backup the MBR and first partition. On a restore I use dd to copy that to the new disk and then run fdisk to fix the size of the other partitions before restoring a rsync backup and editing GRUB config files. There are CD/USB boot images that can be used to reinstall GRUB, but I find that a PITA when I can just use a USB drive caddy to dd a /boot image. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/