Subject: Notes on using dd to clone Debian 13.4.0 KDE Plasma installation on my Edxis Chromebook model LI9
Good day from Singapore, Detailed steps as shown below. 1. Prepare USB thumb drive with System Rescue 13.00 for amd64. This is a 1.22 GB ISO file download. 2. Boot up Edxis Chromebook or your laptop or your desktop computer or your server with System Rescue 13.00 USB thumb drive. 3. Connect a portable USB external harddisk to the Edxis Chromebook using a USB 3.0 Hub. 4. Use the following Linux commands: # mkdir /backup Assuming your portable USB external harddisk is /dev/sdb1 # mount /dev/sdb1 /backup # dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4M status=progress | gzip -1 > /backup/emmc.img.gz 🔍 Explanation bs=4M → good speed for eMMC status=progress → shows progress conv=fsync → ensures proper flushing (safer image) gzip -1 → fast compression (important for you) 👉 -1 is key: Much faster than default (-6) Slightly larger file, but saves a lot of time The filesize of my emmc.img.gz is 4.71 GB. The cloning process using dd took 916.149 seconds, which is about 15 minutes. Taking about 15 minutes to clone Debian 13.4.0 KDE Plasma installation on Edxis Chromebook is relatively fast. Restoring from the backup image file ===================================== # gunzip -c emmc.img.gz | dd of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4M status=progress conv=fsync Once dd finishes: # sync Then reboot: # reboot 🔍 What this does gunzip -c emmc.img.gz → decompress image to stdout | → pipe into dd dd of=/dev/mmcblk0 → writes directly to your eMMC bs=4M → good performance status=progress → shows progress conv=fsync → ensures all data is flushed to disk (important on restore) I don't think I will be using Acronis True Image, Clonezilla, Rescuezilla, or fsarchiver any more since using dd is very fast. About 15 minutes only. And it resulted in only 1 backup image file which is what I have always wanted. 1 backup image file is easier to manage. Regards, Mr. Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming Extremely Democratic People's Republic of Singapore 9 Apr 2026 Thursday 5.29 pm Singapore Time
