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Asked: 2024-01-02 04:07:14 +0800 CST

What do partclone.dd and partclone.imager do differently?

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I'm writing some backup software that needs functionality like partclone(8), and having some trouble with the man pages. In particular, I don't see any difference between the pages for partclone.dd and partclone.imager, and the two binaries, while different, are the exact same size. Moreover, I found a question somewhere with an answer that made a distinction between them, but it was not clear why.

So I'm really wanting to know what is different between them. I had supposed they were just dd disguise, but I'm ready to be proven wrong.

backup

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I ran 4 copies of a fairly large EXT4 partition to see what the differences could be. That, together with some further inside info, seems to settle the matter for me.

    The 4 copies I made were by the following programs:

    • partclone.ext4
    • partclone.dd
    • partclone.imager
    • dd (the real one)

    I discovered that the first was by far the smallest, which makes sense because it does not have to back up everything -- just the stuff that is occupied.

    I discovered that partclone.dd produces exactly the same image that the real dd produces. Just with a different command interface.

    I discovered that partclone.imager produces a considerably larger image than dd, which is consistent with the clone format I found at https://github.com/Thomas-Tsai/partclone/blob/master/IMAGE_FORMATS.md. This includes checksums and bitmaps.

    It makes sense to me that in cases where dd could make sense, I'll use partclone.imager rather than dd because of the added robustness and checking in the event of damage to the backup.

    The added parameters --clone, --restore and --disk-to-disk are needed by partclone.imager because the image is not identical to the source partition.

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