DUMP + RESTORE

[Alex Zbyslaw]

Grant Peel wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>I know that if I dump a filesystem (lets say a full dump), that everything says the restore filesystem needs to be at least as big as the one the dump was made from.
>
>But I dare ask this question anyway ...
>
>If I have a filesystem that is 10 GIG, but because I am only using 2 GIG of that can I restore it to a 3 GIg file system?
>
>I ask becuase somehow I have a 73 gig drive, but all my spare hard disks disks are only 36 Gig.
>  
>
You only need as much disk space where you are restoring as you actually 
used on the filesystem being dumped, so yes, if you really only used 2Gb 
then restoring to a 3Gb partition is fine.  Just beware that a 3Gb 
partition before newfs will have less that 3Gb of usable space as some 
is taken up by filesystem overhead, and the 10% space is usually to be 
left free for speedier, less fragmented operation.  But 2Gb of data will 
still fit comfortably.

This is *one* of the reasons why dump is better than dd.  dd just copies 
the whole slice, all 10Gb in this case, and then you'd be stuck :-)

--Alex