[linux-lvm] snapshots and backups

[Shaun]

I'm looking at using snapshots to take a full backup.  I've been search 
around Google a bit and so far most of the how-to's I find are always 
creating a snapshot, then mounting it, copying the data, unmounting it and 
removing it.  My question is why are they doing this?  Is it because they 
assume they only need data from one area of the drive or is there a better 
reason for doing this?  I want to take a full backup and leave the snapshot 
incase I need to restore it quickly.

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~Shaun