Consider use of RonR image-backup?

[cjlindem]

I've recently tried out a bare-metal Raspberry Pi .img creation tool called image-backup. It's an older tool and doesn't seem to be much maintained anymore. But it generates a relatively small .img file from a live system which can be used even from Windows to restore to an SD card. I'm not very good with Linux and I much prefer the UI configuration tool that RaspiBackup offers, however, RaspiBackup's DD mode takes ~30 minutes to do the same backup that image-backup does in about 8 minutes. And the image-backup image burns in maybe 10 minutes compared to hours for the RaspiBackup one, which seems to decompress to the full size of the SDCard.

I was wondering if RaspiBackup might incorporate the use of image-backup in the future, maybe as a 4th backup mode.

[framps]

image-backup takes long the first time because all the data has to be copied. Then all future backups are very fast because the existing backup is synced with the system and only files updated or created are copied.

raspiBackup has a different approach: Every backup is a new backup and then you have multiple backups and a backup history. Therefore every time a full backup is created with backup type dd which you can restore from a windows system. If you use the backup type rsync you have the simular functionality you have with image-backup 😉 But then you have to use Linux to restore your backup. Windows is not able to handle backup type rsync.

See this option and this option which will speedup the backup time for a dd backup.

It's an older tool and doesn't seem to be much maintained anymore.

It's maintained actively by RonR in the Raspberry Pi forum. 🤔

[cjlindem]

Thanks for the reply,

My experience is that image-backup is fast, I've only ever used the full backup (--initialbackup option).
My current RaspiBackup configuration is using both of the mentioned options

The same raspberry pi unit, backed up last night, both tools running from the OS of the host raspberry pi, both writing to the same /mnt/

image-backup (full backup w/--initialbackup)
Time to back up: 5 minutes
Resulting image size: 16.5GB
Time to burn to SD card (no verify): 12 minutes

RaspiBackup (full backup w/dd)
Time to back up: 30 minutes
Resulting image size: 128GB, compressed to 6.7GB
Time to burn SD card (no verify): hours
Options used:
DEFAULT_DD_BLOCKSIZE=1M
DEFAULT_DD_BACKUP_SAVE_USED_PARTITIONS_ONLY=1
DEFAULT_ZIP_BACKUP="1"

[framps]

You compare apples with pears 😉

image-backup is a clone tool and you use the one clone as your backup. raspiBackup is a backup tool which creates a new backup every time. If you use rsync with raspiBackup and a nice feature of ext filesystem is used you'll get the same behavior you have with image-backup: Only the first backup is a full backup, all other backups are just delta backups. Please read this page . I don't suggest to use dd for any backup. See here for a detailed explanation.

• dd is supported by raspiBackup only because windows folks like to be able to restore the backup on windows
• tar is supported for folks who cannot use an ext filesystem which is required for rsync
• rsync is the suggested and most efficient backup type for raspiBackup

DEFAULT_DD_BLOCKSIZE=1M
DEFAULT_DD_BACKUP_SAVE_USED_PARTITIONS_ONLY=1
DEFAULT_ZIP_BACKUP="1"

You kept the default. Just increase the blocksize to be optimal for your used device. AFAIK 4M is usually a better blocksize. You wrote your backup is 128GB. Looks like you didn't reduce the last partition size. See FAQ16 for details. If you use zip this will increase the backup time seriously.

[cjlindem]

I misunderstood the usage of DEFAULT_DD_BACKUP_SAVE_USED_PARTITIONS_ONLY. I see now that I would need to resize my partition for this to help. It seems like my best option (as is reiterated in your very thorough documentation) is to avoid the dd option and use tar or rsync instead. I guess I need to spend some time to familiarize myself with the Linux-based restore process.

Thanks, again.

[framps]

is to avoid the dd option and use tar or rsync instead
👍