Creating an image of my drive

[chrisrx]

I want to create an image of my drive for backup purposes and as far as I know linux treats devices as files.
So am I right in thinking that to create an image of my drive I can use

cat /dev/sda1 > image.img
or possibly

cp /dev/sda1 image.img
Which should then create an image which can be properly mounted with

mount -o loop

Am I right in thinking this?

[forger]

You must be looking to install partimage (Applications > Accessories > Terminal):

sudo apt-get install partimage
sudo partimage


Description: backup partitions into a compressed image file
Partition Image is a partition imaging utility. It has support for the
following file systems:
* Ext2/3, the linux standard
* Reiser3, a journalised and powerful file system
* FAT16/32, DOS and Windows file systems
* HPFS, IBM OS/2 file system
* JFS, journalised file system, from IBM, used on AIX
* XFS, another journalised and efficient file system, from sgi, used on Irix
* UFS (beta), Unix file system
* HFS (beta), MacOS File system
* NTFS (experimental), Windows NT, 2000 and XP
Only used blocks are copied and stored into an image file.
The image file can be compressed in the GZIP/BZIP2 formats to save disk space,
and split into multiple files to be copied onto removable media (ZIP for
example), burned on a CD-R, etc.
.
This makes it possible to save a full Linux/Windows system with a single
operation. In case of a problem (virus, crash, error, etc.), you just have
to restore, and after several minutes, your entire system is restored
(boot, files, etc.), and fully working.
.
This is very useful when installing the same software on many machines: just
install one of them, create an image, and restore the image on all other
machines.
.
Homepage: http://www.partimage.org


edit: partimage can't work with mounted partitions, but mondo might be able to create a partition of a mounted partition:

sudo apt-get install mondo
sudo mondoarchive

[prshah]

I want to create an image of my drive for backup purposes

Close, but not exactly. You need to use the "dd" command instead of cat. See Exact duplicate of entire HDD (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=874643) for exact details.

If you want to backup just a single partition, then partimage (as previously mentioned) off a live CD is the best solution.

[chrisrx]

If I use partimage can I then mount the image using
mount -o loop

Because I want to be able to pick out files from my backup instead of restoring the whole partition.

[prshah]

If I use partimage can I then mount the image using
mount -o loop

Because I want to be able to pick out files from my backup instead of restoring the whole partition.

Well, the default partimage image is compressed (gzip / bzip) so I don't think you can loopmount that.

Maybe you can loopmount an uncompressed image, but I've never tried it and cannot comment on it.

[forger]

mondo makes .iso backup files which you can either use as bootup disks to restore your partition or just mount them as you say and find out your files
Edit: Actually, I'm not sure if you can restore them by file. Maybe you could use the tar command to make backups of your files instead