Advice needed to produce a compressed image file of system partition with backup software

[t5404tmz]

I need advice as to which free program I should use to backup and restore my system partition.


I recently had a hard drive fail and because I don't have a good disaster recovery system I ended up having to rebuild Ubuntu 20.04 from scratch. I did, fortunately, have a backup of my data.

I would use Clonezilla if it worked consistently, but my experience is that it is not always reliable.

Is there a way to use dd with compression? Even if it takes a set of steps to do an uncompressed backup image with dd and then compress it with another step?

The bottom line is that I just want a disaster recovery procedure which I can rely on. So my specific question for this post is:

What backup software should I use to create a compressed image file for my Ubuntu 20.04 system partition?

Thanks for your support.

 

[Condobloke]

G'day t5404tmz, Welcome to Linux.org

I do not have a great deal of experience with Ubuntu, but I am reasonably well experienced with Linux Mint.

On LM, (linux mint) there is an app called 'Disks' m ....it is included by default

I would be surprised if it were not also included in Ubuntu.

I access that by simply typing disks into the menu.

It appears as in the pic below.

I have already clicked on the three vertical dots....which then shows "Create Disc Image'

BE AWARE...you actually need to access 'disks' via a bootable usb stick with ubuntu 20.04 on it.

By doing that it enables your hard drive with 20.04 on it to be unmounted.....which it has to be in order to be cloned to another hard drive

I am reasonably certain that it does not offer compression.

I will test that shortly and report back here.

it is free

It does work....in both directions...it clones the drive and it also restores.

 

[Condobloke]

I was correct...it does not offer compression.

 

[t5404tmz]

Thanks Condobloke! I never knew that Disks could do that. I'm testing it right now.

 

[Condobloke]

Cool.

 

[Thunderpants]

Resuezilla works well for compressed backups. It's compatible with clonezilla but less tedious to use, I prefer partition backup software on separate bootable media.

Easy disk cloning and imaging | Rescuezilla (Clonezilla GUI)

Free bare metal restore solution with graphical interface on a live CD. Point-and-click to backup and restore an entire computer. Bare metal disaster recovery restores all programs, documents and settings. GPL open source.

rescuezilla.com

 

[KGIII]

Duplicity does compression.