Backing up system

[Michael D. Setzer II]

On 27 Mar 2009 at 12:42, Bill Crawford wrote:

From:           	Bill Crawford <billcrawford1970 at gmail.com>
Organization:   	None
To:             	fedora-list at redhat.com
Subject:        	Re: Backing up system
Date sent:      	Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:42:56 +0000
Copies to:      	"Michael D. Setzer II" <mikes at kuentos.guam.net>

> On Friday 27 March 2009 09:01:30 Michael D. Setzer II wrote:
> 
> > It does work best if you clear unused space before doing an image to reduce
> > space since the null filled sectors compress to almost nothing.
> 
> How do you do that?

The cd has various scripts and programs on it to help.
cleandrive is the simplest script that free space for linux/unix.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/0bits bs=20M
rm /0bits

That script does it, but no feedback on process. cleandrive5 and cleandrive6 
do the same but use Dialog or Xdialog to provide a progress bar. The require 
the appropriate dialog program be installed and the jetcat-mod program 
copied to the / directory. 

For fat32 and ntfs partitions blank6.exe can be used to clear free space for 
Windows. The is a lblank6 linux program that does a similar task from linux 
on the mounted fat32 or ntfs partition. 

Additionally, there are other programs on the web that do this.

Long ago, I had done a Fedora 3 full install on a 80GB disk, and did an 
image. Produced a 12GB compressed image file. Then cleared unused 
space, and redid image. Only a 2.5GB image file. So, the random 
information from the drive took 9.5GB of space.



+----------------------------------------------------------+
  Michael D. Setzer II -  Computer Science Instructor      
  Guam Community College  Computer Center                  
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