Backup with dd?

[Garance A Drosihn]

At 1:03 PM -0600 1/3/05, Eric F Crist wrote:
>On Jan 3, 2005, at 12:46 PM, Andrew P. wrote:
>
>>Eric F Crist wrote:
>>>
>>>You seem to be under the impression that I'm doing this for the
>>>sole reason of a disk crash.  I'm actually doing it for more
>>>than just that reason.  For example, if my system gets hacked,
>>>most hackers will probably not care about an unmounted hard
>>>drive, and screw with the current mounted partitions.  [...etc...]
>>
>>Backing up with dd is ultimately straightforward, but is not a
>>good idea at all. The matter is when dd is running, the source
>>may be modified and the copy might be inconsistent. Software RAID
>>should be the best option for your task: you can mirror a drive
>>to a second one and then just plug the second one out of your
>>computer.
>>
>>Best wishes,
>>Andrew P.
>
>Is this vinum?  Fairly difficult to setup, or is it straight-forward?
>Before I delve into that, any setup recommendations?

Software raid seems like a messy way to handle this, when all he
wants is straight copies of the partitions.  Much easier to mount
and umount some destination-partition(s), than it is to unplug a
hard drive.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad at gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad at freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih at rpi.edu