From: nospam@needed.invalid   
      
   On Fri, 12/19/2025 11:15 AM, vallor wrote:   
   > At Fri, 19 Dec 2025 05:57:08 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro   
    wrote:   
   >   
   >> On Thu, 18 Dec 2025 22:58:05 -0500, Paul wrote:   
   >>   
   >>> On Thu, 12/18/2025 7:49 PM, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:   
   >>>>   
   >>>> Never bothered with image copies. The files are the important thing.   
   >>>>   
   >>> While updating Devuan, it was only taking 1 minute 30 seconds to make   
   >>> safety copies of the disk. It's pretty easy to do. They're compressed   
   >>> to save space.   
   >>   
   >> Wonderful. So how do you do selective restores?   
   >   
   > Is it a trick question?   
   >   
   > Mount the image file as a loopback device (with a possible   
   > offset to the partition within the image), and then use rsync.   
   >   
      
   You can make copies of disks with "dd" for example, and you   
   can mount partitions off a dd image.   
      
   The beauty of "dd" is you know it works -- as long as the disk   
   is healthy, you are making an *exact* copy using it, which is   
   good for forensic purposes. If you need to go back to some   
   situation exactly as it was, the "dd" way is the way to do it.   
   Many other methods could miss something.   
      
   A partimage might be more compact, and I don't know the details   
   of handling one of those. Clonezilla might use partimage,   
   and you can clone to a .img style output just as easily as clone from   
   one hard drive to another hard drive. I don't know how partimage   
   stores its data.   
      
   I pointed out in a previous post, that my imaging method took   
   only 1 minute 30 seconds to back up my Devuan hard drive (I normally   
   tell people a smart inode/cluster backup might take ten minutes).   
   It would take hours to run a "dd", in comparison. A partimage   
   should also run in 1 minute 30 seconds, but you have a   
   bunch of menus to fiddle with to do it (from Clonezilla).   
      
      Paul   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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