On Saturday 14 August 2010, Adam Carter wrote: > This is to backup my laptop from boot cdrom - how does it look? > > File systems; > /dev/sda1 - /boot > /dev/sda2 - swap > /dev/sda3 - / > > So to backup; > 1. Get MBR (grub and partition table): dd if=/dev/sda > of=/otherdisk/sda-mbr.bin bs=512 count=1 > 2. Get /boot: dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/otherdisk/sda1.bin > 3. Get /: dd if=/dev/sda3 | gzip | dd of=/otherdisk/sda3.bin.gz > > Then too restore onto new disk; > 1. Restore MBR: dd if=/otherdisk/sda-mbr.bin of=/dev/sda > - no bs or count parameters required? > 2. Restore /boot: dd if=/otherdisk/sda1.bin of=/dev/sda1 > 3. Restore /: dd if=/otherdisk/sda3.bin.gz | gunzip | dd of=/dev/sda3 > 4. Setup swap partition: mkswap /dev/sda2 > 5. Boot system > > Caveat is the the new disk must be big enough to fit sda1/2/3.
why backup mbr? installing grub takes less time then the backup and restore of the mbr. And dd for backups? Why wasting space? Why suffering from problems when the new harddisk has a different size? Just tar up everything.
