Carlos E. R. wrote:
dd is dumb: if you take the image of a 100 GB disk and dd it to a new 200 GB disk, you loose 100 GB.
for sure. but each system have the pros and cons. using cp or tar makes you at risk of losing a linked file or a "." (dot) invisible file. It's faily difficult to figure out what is important and what is not. dd (or similar) make a true backup: all is backed up, and the result can be gzipped for space saving (see also "partimage"). the only really safe system is a mix of the two, with in mind the fact than what is important is not backup but restore... use dd (even ddrescue if some disk sectors can be damaged). with the new drive: * partition the new drive. Get a temporary partition at least as big as the old drive. use dd to recover on this partition. Now all your data is available. Keep this as long as you can (several years is nice) * on an _other_ partition, copy all what you think is usefull. be strict, copy only the really necessary, if ever you need more it's already available. I use a similar sheme when I change distro. I frequently go on the old partition two years later, when I happen to use an old rarely used script :-) (or the old .signature I had two years ago...) jdd -- http://www.dodin.net Cécile, esthéticienne à Montpellier http://gourmandises.orangeblog.fr/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org