Drive images backup in Linux

Question

I have a linux server, and i want to make an image of the whole drive in real-time, like acronis does.

could you further explain 'wants in a real time.'? W/ linux, you can literally just do a dd on the /dev/hdX and get an image of the hard drive. Very easy to do and very easy to put back (just change the if and of options around basically)
yeah, I wasn't sure you could do that with an in use root partition. i think in real time means without going to alternate boot media

aking1012 · Answer 1 · 2010-12-07 12:02:05Z

up vote 1 down vote

I use LVM religiously. It makes filesystem management so much easier...if you use lvm there's a tutorial here: http://www.howtoforge.com/linux_lvm_snapshots

answered Dec 7 '10 at 12:02

aking1012
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feedback

Zhiqiang Ma · Answer 2 · 2010-12-09 04:22:54Z

LVM is a good choice.

LVM snapshot can be created in real time by -s when using lvcreate: http://fclose.com/p/linux/man/8-lvcreate/#lbAE

For example, we can create a 2GB snapshot of lv_root by:

# lvcreate -L20480 -s -n 'lv_root_snapshot' /dev/vg/lv_root

Then we can dd the snapshot out (this cost time):

# dd if=/dev/vg/lv_root_snapshot of=/var/backup/lv_root.img

2 Answers