Re: tar whole windows partition
From: Sz. Csetey (szcs_at_abuse.co.uk)
Date: 05/12/04
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Date: 12 May 2004 08:19:12 -0700
John Thompson <john@starfleet.os2.dhs.org> wrote in message
> Tar may not be the best solution for backing up a "foreign" filesystem
> like NTFS.
Right, tar can't save streams, ACL, etc. Moreover untar also wouldn't
work because write is broken thus disabled in the 2.4 kernels. Even
recompiling the kernel with ntfs read-write support doesn't help
unless you properly modify the drivers source code.
On the other hand, the rewritten NTFS driver in kernel 2.6 doesn't
implement the needed write functionality at all, hence untar wouldn't
work again (if I remember correctly, the error message from the kernel
is: "not supported").
> NTFS support in linux is still characterized as "experiemental"
> particularly if you intend to write to an NTFS filesystem.
The driver in 2.4 is unsafe for both read and write and write support
is broken. This driver isn't developed for about 4-5 years.
The driver in 2.6 is safe. Both read and write. But write is not fully
implemented and only the safe parts are included in the kernel.
See details at: http://linux-ntfs.sf.net
> You may have better luck with a disk image program such as "partimage"
> (http://www.partimage.org/). A disk image program will not suffer from
> filesystem-specific issues,
Not true, partimage implemented its own NTFS driver. And according to
the authors, it is experimental (see the partimage page you included
above).
But on the other hand the Linux-NTFS projects ntfsclone is stable (see
the status page on the above mentioned linux-ntfs site).
Rumors say that the experimental NTFS partimage code will be replaced
by the stable linux-ntfs code in the near future.
> since it makes a bit-by-bit copy of the
> filesystem. The disadvantage of a disk image program is that it will also
> copy all the cruft (deleted files, filesystem errors, etc.) into the image
Not true. Partimage reads the block allocation bitmaps of the
filesystems and it saves the used block. It works at block (sector
level), not file level. It doesn't save deleted, unused space.
> and they will re-created when you restore the filesystem from the image.
True but it restores only the used data. Basically it's a filesystem
aware dd.
> For this reason, image backups also tend to be larger than filesystem
> backups,
True for dd. But Partimage is more clever because it understands the
filesystem thus it doesn't save everything. The partimage images are
(a bit) bigger than tarred packages because it saves the entire
filesystem data unlike tar that doesn't know about everything and it
would lose data permanently.
> but compression of the image file can reduce much of that type of
> thing.
Good point.
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