On 08/01/2019 17:08, Henri Derksen wrote:

[Copying an active drive using dd]

> When doing this, you never get an exact copy, because of open files
> at a running system in the mmcblk0 SDcard slot.

You will can all sorts of weird problems from block copying an active
drive, so its definitely not recommended, as you say.

> For a very first backup, this is almost the only way, as you need
> a second card to boot from, to backup another properly.

What I do is set up the Raspberry Pi, then take out the card and use
another machine to copy the card using dd to an image file on a NAS disc.

Then I keep that image up to date by setting up a daily cron job to
mount the image file on the Pi, and use rsync to copy on to it just the
files which have changed, which is quick.

Regularly I make a compressed copy of the image file, just in case an
upgrade breaks it, or the card starts failing an corrupting it.

When the card reaches end of life, I have an up to date image file ready
to copy on to a new SD card.

---druck

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