I've been using this program for years to back up my various Ubuntu and
Win based PCs without incident. To keep things simple and fast, I
simply mirror my current hard drives to the same size back up drive,
then if anything happens, I can just switch out the bad drive for the
back up and pick up right where I left off. However, since backing up
the entire drive each time does take time with the larger hard drives,
I'm wondering if there's a way I can use the program to just back up any changes and/or additions I made since prior back up, that way the
process would go a lot faster. Thank you!

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If you decide to do create full bit-for-bit copy of your drive it takes
a long time.
If you don't want that, create an incremental backup containing just
files.
That should go much faster.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Às 17:55 de 16/11/21, Ruk escreveu:

On 11/16/21 12:05 PM, Marco Moock wrote:

If you decide to do create full bit-for-bit copy of your drive it takes
a long time.
If you don't want that, create an incremental backup containing just
files.
That should go much faster.

True, but can it be done in Clonezilla?

That cannot be possible.
For that the program must:
1. Read a block from source;
2. Read the corresponding block from dest.;
3. Compare;
4. Rewrite the read source block on destination if they are different.

Compare this with just copying:
1. Read source block;
2. Write it to dest.

As you can see, there is no advantage in first process unless write
operations are too much slower than read ones which is in general not true.

Regards.
Paulo

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On 16.11.2021 at 18:58, Marco Moock scribbled:

Am Tue, 16 Nov 2021 12:55:51 -0500
schrieb Ruk <rthekeeper@zed.net>:

On 11/16/21 12:05 PM, Marco Moock wrote:

If you don't want that, create an incremental backup containing
just files.
That should go much faster.

True, but can it be done in Clonezilla?

I don't know that it supports such a feature, it is a tool for cloning
disks, partitions and file systems, but I don't think it supports an incremental backup of files.

When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything in need of fixing
starts looking like a nail. ;)


--
With respect,
= Aragorn =

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Am Tue, 16 Nov 2021 12:55:51 -0500
schrieb Ruk <rthekeeper@zed.net>:

On 11/16/21 12:05 PM, Marco Moock wrote:

If you don't want that, create an incremental backup containing just
files.
That should go much faster.

True, but can it be done in Clonezilla?

I don't know that it supports such a feature, it is a tool for cloning
disks, partitions and file systems, but I don't think it supports an incremental backup of files.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 11/16/21 12:05 PM, Marco Moock wrote:

If you decide to do create full bit-for-bit copy of your drive it takes
a long time.
If you don't want that, create an incremental backup containing just
files.
That should go much faster.

True, but can it be done in Clonezilla?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Try Deja Dup. It does incremental.

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Am Tue, 16 Nov 2021 18:12:48 +0000
schrieb Ray Hughes <rhughes@rays-dell.i-did-not-set--mail-host-address--so-tickle-me>:

Try Deja Dup. It does incremental.

I also use it. It is really easy to set up.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 16.11.2021 at 20:51, Marco Moock scribbled:

Am Tue, 16 Nov 2021 18:12:48 +0000
schrieb Ray Hughes <rhughes@rays-dell.i-did-not-set--mail-host-address--so-tickle-me>:

Try Deja Dup. It does incremental.

I also use it. It is really easy to set up.

Timeshift does incremental backups too, can be used both from the
command line and by way of a GUI, and can use either rsync or btrfs
snapshots. It can be run manually or via cron.

By default, it does not include the home directories — the developer
insists that it wasn't intended for that — but you can easily make it
do so, just you can equally easily add or omit directories. If you
enable the backing up of home directories, then it will by default
skip ~/.cache, but you may wish to also make it skip /var/cache, and
perhaps even /var/log.

It's pretty adaptable, and it hasn't failed me yet so far. It comes preinstalled by default in Manjaro, and it's the backup strategy most
used in said distribution. Deja Dup is the number two choice.

--
With respect,
= Aragorn =

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On 2021-11-16, Ruk <rthekeeper@zed.net> wrote:

I've been using this program for years to back up my various Ubuntu and
Win based PCs without incident. To keep things simple and fast, I
simply mirror my current hard drives to the same size back up drive,
then if anything happens, I can just switch out the bad drive for the
back up and pick up right where I left off. However, since backing up
the entire drive each time does take time with the larger hard drives,
I'm wondering if there's a way I can use the program to just back up any changes and/or additions I made since prior back up, that way the
process would go a lot faster. Thank you!

When you say imaging a drive I think you are cloning it to the second drive
as you can just swap drives after the disaster hits.

Clonezilla images a drive/partition by reading only the blocks in use. The unused space is not read.This saves some time.

As others have hinted there probably are better ways to achieve your end
goal without using clonezilla. Remember the Unix philosphy is to have a programme which does one thing, and does it well.

From the Clonezilla website

Limitations:

The destination partition must be equal or larger than the source one.

Differential/incremental backup is not implemented yet.

Online imaging/cloning is not implemented yet. The partition to be
imaged or cloned has to be unmounted.

Due to the image format limitation, the image can not be explored or mounted. You can _NOT_ recovery single file from the image. However, you
still have workaround to make it, read this.

Recovery Clonezilla live with multiple CDs or DVDs is not implemented
yet. Now all the files have to be in one CD or DVD if you choose to
create the recovery iso file.

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On 11/16/2021 8:12 AM, Ruk wrote:

I've been using this program for years to back up my various Ubuntu > and Win based PCs without incident.  To keep things simple and fast, I
simply mirror my current hard drives to the same size back up drive,
then if anything happens, I can just switch out the bad drive for the
back up and pick up right where I left off.  However, since backing
up the entire drive each time does take time with the larger hard
drives, I'm wondering if there's a way I can use the program to just
back up any changes and/or additions I made since prior back up,
that way the process would go a lot faster.  Thank you!

There are a couple ways people can write the software.

They can use scripting, and script the execution of existing
tools. If a person uses a "progs" package for manipulating
disk contents, there would be a tendency for the project
to have the limits imposed by the features of the
individual progs used.

If a person sits down and writes source code and compiles
their own executable, the feature set can be much
broader, such as supporting Incremental.

As far as I know, Clonezilla is one of the scripting type
setups. And can only be as good, as the progs it reuses
for the purpose.

*******

When you use Incrementals, the pattern looks like this.

Full----Incr---Incr----Incr
Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday

If you want to restore to the Wednesday state, all
four files must be readable. This means that eventually,
if you do enough Incrementals in a row, the "reliability"
at restoration time drops. All it would take, is for
one of the four files to be damaged, and the restoration
to Wednesday would no longer work.

This means you should truncate the sequence once in a while.

Full----Incr---Incr----Incr Full-----Incr---Incr
Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday

That way, if the Wednesday file is damaged, I can still
restore to Thursday, Friday, or Saturday state. Thursday,
Friday, Saturday, do not depend on the health of Wednesday now.

Incrementals can save a lot of space, but don't get carried
away. That's the message here.

I've had several rather large archives, damaged when the
RAM was bad on the computer and I did not know it. This is
why I give the warning about corrupted archives, so you
don't fall into a similar trap.

It helps if each file has an internal checksum, so the
integrity of each archive file can be verified.

Paul

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On 11/16/2021 6:37 PM, Gordon wrote:

On 2021-11-16, Ruk <rthekeeper@zed.net> wrote:

I've been using this program for years to back up my various Ubuntu and
Win based PCs without incident. To keep things simple and fast, I
simply mirror my current hard drives to the same size back up drive,
then if anything happens, I can just switch out the bad drive for the
back up and pick up right where I left off. However, since backing up
the entire drive each time does take time with the larger hard drives,
I'm wondering if there's a way I can use the program to just back up any
changes and/or additions I made since prior back up, that way the
process would go a lot faster. Thank you!

When you say imaging a drive I think you are cloning it to the second drive as you can just swap drives after the disaster hits.

Clonezilla images a drive/partition by reading only the blocks in use. The unused space is not read.This saves some time.

As others have hinted there probably are better ways to achieve your end
goal without using clonezilla. Remember the Unix philosphy is to have a programme which does one thing, and does it well.

From the Clonezilla website

Limitations:

The destination partition must be equal or larger than the source one.

Differential/incremental backup is not implemented yet.

Online imaging/cloning is not implemented yet. The partition to be imaged or cloned has to be unmounted.

Due to the image format limitation, the image can not be explored or mounted. You can _NOT_ recovery single file from the image. However, you still have workaround to make it, read this.

Recovery Clonezilla live with multiple CDs or DVDs is not implemented yet. Now all the files have to be in one CD or DVD if you choose to
create the recovery iso file.

I would think you could mount a partition inside a flat, dd-like, image.
It would take a loopback mount, plus an offset parameter.

And if you need hints, you can try

sudo disktype ~/Downloads/some.img

and see what it can tell you. Some simple arithmetic
with the numbers it provides, can allow working out
the offset value. A loopback mount accepts a 64-bit
offset value. I like to enter those in hex, as it's
cleaner looking.

Paul

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On 16-11-2021 14:12, Ruk wrote:

I've been using this program for years to back up my various Ubuntu and
Win based PCs without incident.  To keep things simple and fast, I
simply mirror my current hard drives to the same size back up drive,
then if anything happens, I can just switch out the bad drive for the
back up and pick up right where I left off.  However, since backing up
the entire drive each time does take time with the larger hard drives,
I'm wondering if there's a way I can use the program to just back up any changes and/or additions I made since prior back up, that way the
process would go a lot faster.  Thank you!

Two step process:
Make a Clonezilla full backup say once a month;
Make backups of the file system (say each day) with rsync in a way that
only changed/new data is processed (search "jjb rsync" with DDG).
This way you have only once a month a process that takes quite some
time, and each day a short time complete backup of your filesystem.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Às 18:05 de 16/11/21, Paulo da Silva escreveu:

Às 17:55 de 16/11/21, Ruk escreveu:

On 11/16/21 12:05 PM, Marco Moock wrote:

If you decide to do create full bit-for-bit copy of your drive it takes
a long time.
If you don't want that, create an incremental backup containing just
files.
That should go much faster.

True, but can it be done in Clonezilla?

That cannot be possible.
For that the program must:
1. Read a block from source;
2. Read the corresponding block from dest.;
3. Compare;
4. Rewrite the read source block on destination if they are different.

Compare this with just copying:
1. Read source block;
2. Write it to dest.

As you can see, there is no advantage in first process unless write operations are too much slower than read ones which is in general not true.

Sorry, but I confused Clonezilla with another utility.
Please forget this post.
BTW, Clonezilla, as per its site, "Differential/incremental backup is
not implemented yet".

Paulo

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 11/17/2021 8:57 AM, jjb wrote:

On 16-11-2021 14:12, Ruk wrote:

I've been using this program for years to back up my various Ubuntu and
Win based PCs without incident.  To keep things simple and fast, I
simply mirror my current hard drives to the same size back up drive,
then if anything happens, I can just switch out the bad drive for the
back up and pick up right where I left off.  However, since backing up
the entire drive each time does take time with the larger hard drives,
I'm wondering if there's a way I can use the program to just back up any
changes and/or additions I made since prior back up, that way the
process would go a lot faster.  Thank you!

Two step process:
Make a Clonezilla full backup say once a month;
Make backups of the file system (say each day) with rsync in a way that
only changed/new data is processed (search "jjb rsync" with DDG).
This way you have only once a month a process that takes quite some
time, and each day a short time complete backup of your filesystem.

How about (for extn) ...

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/disk_cloning

# The output is sparse, so it nicely saves space and time for us.
# And the image can still be "dd" transferred back onto a disk,
# in place of the damaged partition number.

cd /media/distro/backups
sudo e2image -ra -p /dev/sdd1 myimage.img # copy only occupied storage areas
# -r equals RAW (metadata at same offsets)
# -a equals include file data
# -p progress indicator during op

ls -al myimage.img # lists as 64GB file size
du myimage.img # but space-on-disk is 10GB (size of files in archive)
# Transfer speed is decent.

Best done from a USB pen drive, so the underlying
file system to be copied, is "at rest". e2image warns
if you are trying to do this to a "live slash partition".

To randomly access the backup image later...

sudo mkdir /mnt/muchlater
sudo mount myimage.img /mnt/muchlater
cd /mnt/muchlater/home/username/Downloads
ls -al

Since we're using the USB stick, the account shows
as 1000:1000 instead of username:username. But the file
is there in the list and can be opened.

[Picture]

https://i.postimg.cc/d0yPqQkZ/e2image.gif

If you boot from the regular HDD slash partition
and mount /mnt/muchlater, the ls -al then will
look perfectly normal.

Paul

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