On Fri, Aug 29, 2025 at 02:02:43PM +0100, mick.crane wrote: > I have my data on a separate disk that I copy to various places every now > and again. > I guess simplest is original plan ( as have been previously given the > incantation ) to get 3 ~200Gb disks and dd to them.
If your purpose is backup - then you are *far* better mounting the disk as a file system and then copying files somewhere using tar or cpio. That somewhere could be a disk - although something like a USB memory stick would be better as these are more robust and smaller than a hard disk. Why: • you are copying the data (your files), not all the other bytes on disk (that are useless to you) • the tar/cpio archive will be readable on a greater number of systems than just the ones that support the file system on your disk (prolly ext2/similar) -- Alain Williams Linux/GNU Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT Lecturer. +44 (0) 787 668 0256 https://www.phcomp.co.uk/ Parliament Hill Computers. Registration Information: https://www.phcomp.co.uk/Contact.html #include <std_disclaimer.h>
