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Wondering if installation transfers is possible. (self.linux)

submitted 1 week ago by Lost_My_Mind to c/linux

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So on android in 2010 I used to be into the idea of rooting my phone, and installing custom roms.

Distros are essentially custom roms for your pc. Same concept.

There was a program called TWRP that I could use. Back then it would make a full backup of EVERYTHING on your internal drive. It was mostly used after you already had a custom rom.

But it backedup EVERYTHING. If you wrote a txt message as a draft, and didn't sent it, then backed up with TWRP, whenever you restored on a new phone, that txt draft was there too. It was literally like your phone took an all encompassing picture of everything on your phones internal drive, every single file and setting, and made a backup. Saving it to your sd card.

So I'm thinking, linux should theoretically be able to do this. Maybe it does.

What if my current install is on a 250gb drive, and I buy a completely different 4TB drive? What if I want to do this total backup, save the backup to a usb hard drive, then put in a NEW hard drive, and have it restore the backup so now my entire old hard drive is now on my new hard drive? And every setting, every file, every last detail is an exact replica.

Could I do that?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (8 children)

You can, and there are a number of options.

Easiest IMO is to install both drives, and then use dd to copy drive A to drive B, and then resize the partitions with gparted to fill the rest of the disk.

Do this from a live USB so that your not currently using drive A.

https://serverfault.com/a/4912

Note that /dev/sda might not be your first disk, so make sure you get them correct. Gparted can help you identify your disks.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Does linux have an equivalent of VSS on windows? I always thought it was odd that Linux needed to be offline to do a disk image whereas on windows I can just do it without rebooting or anything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Is VSS even a backup? I thought it just copies old revisions of files into that shadow area so you can revert them to an old version after you modified them... But I don't think it's a full backup or allows you to restore something like a broken filesystem or any severe error?! I guess you could achive a similar thing with practically any linux backup solution on online filesystems, just that the restore will be a bit more cumbersome. Or something like a snapshot, that'll do everything and even more... Or take one of the backintime clones, if it's userdata...

[–] BenM2023 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Is VSS even a backup?

Nope, not even close.

I thought it just copies old revisions of files into that shadow area

It just copies the deltas...

Backups can use vss to get a static image of the volume (deltas are written to the shadow area, which isn't backed up, whilst the backup is running) it's a little different for vhdx files on VMs but basically the same.

It's magic.... And often means that I don't have to restore lost files from backup, just view the old versions and grab a copy from there.

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