Making full disk image with DD

Question

it is possible to make a full disk image with running ubuntu with following command:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/image_name

After i make it, how can i restore that image on a crushed system?

Solution 1

Boot from the live cd. Mount your destination media to (say) /mnt.

dd if=/dev/sdXXX of=/mnt/mybackup.ddimg

To restore:

dd if=/mnt/mybackup.ddimg of=/dev/sdXXX

The destination drive should be the same size or bigger than the original.

---

A better way is using tar.

Mount the source to /mnt, mount the destination to /home (say)

tar cvfpz /home/mybackup.tar.gz /mnt

This can then be restored to any size drive:

tar xvfpz /home/mybackup.tar.gz

(After mounting source to /home and destination to /mnt.)

Then just install grub.

Solution 2

In addition to hatterman's great answer you can compress the image as it's taken using gzip like this:

dd if=/dev/sdx | gzip > /mnt/mybackup.ddimg.gz

Comments

[Taylor Ramirez]

Three things I would suggest. One: do it from a live CD. Two: make sure the image you create is not on the same volume as the one being copied. Three: this will probably only work if both hard drives are the same size.

[Rinzwind]

@Heihachi why would you not be able to write to a harddisk from a live DVD?

[Taylor Ramirez]

I would suggest using a USB hard drive as the location to sent the image

[CervEd]

note that this might require gzip to run as root