Which reminds me - use ddrescue instead. That will copy everything, skipping bad blocks. From: PLUG-discuss [mailto:plug-discuss-bounces@lists.phxlinux.org] On Behalf Of Bob Elzer Sent: Friday, January 27, 2017 11:00 AM To: Main PLUG discussion list Subject: Re: (OT) Backup Software Suggestions Plus dd would copy all the unused sectors on the disk On Jan 27, 2017 10:00 AM, "Matt Graham" > wrote: On 2017-01-26 17:05, Eric Oyen wrote: why not just use dd and a sufficiently large backup device connected directly to the machine? [...] Basically, I just image the entire device. It's easier to restore that way. dd is usually not a good way to back things up because of speed. "dd if=/dev/mapper/vg-home of=/dev/disk/by-id/usb-123456 bs=1M" would take 90 minutes every time it ran because it's transferring 300ishG. "rsync -av --delete-after /home/ /mnt/backup1/home/" usually takes 2-5 minutes because it's only transferring the files that have changed, which is usually 150-500M or so. -- Crow202 Blog: http://crow202.org/wordpress There is no Darkness in Eternity But only Light too dim for us to see. --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss