I would like to make manual backups of an SD card as a disk image so that it can be easily recreated when needed. I’d like to keep a few versions in case there is a problem I didn’t know about, it can be rolled back.

How can I do this incrementally, or with de-duplication, so that I don’t have to keep full copies of the complete SD card? It’s very big but most of the content won’t be changing much.

It’s for MiyooCFW ROM which is on FAT 32-formatted micro SD card.

Thanks for your help! Also let me know if I am going about the problem in a wrong way.

  • Krafty Kactus@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    9·
    2 months ago

    If it’s a filesystem, it can be backed up using BorgBackup. There are a few different clients but I personally use Vorta on Linux.

    • dan@upvote.au
      4·
      2 months ago

      +1 Borgbackup is great, and its deduplication works very well. Vorta works well, and there’s also GNOME Pika which has a very simple UI. For servers, I use Borgmatic.

    • RedSquadCampFollower@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      2 months ago

      @tkk13909@sopuli.xyz @dan@upvote.au

      Borg backup has insane deduping. The first time I used it I thought it was broken because of how much smaller the backup was compared to the original. I used it with vorta GUI.

      I am not sure how to combine the task of making a disk image with backing up with borg either on the command line or via one of the GUIs?

  • ouch@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 months ago

    I recommend just backing up the files.

    But if you really have to back up the disk image, dd a copy of it, mount the copied image as loopback device, write the loopback filesystem full of /dev/zero, sync, delete the zero file(s), unmount, cp --sparse=always and store the result.

    The reason for using the loopback image step is to prevent wearing out the SD card with writing the free space full of zeros every time you make a backup.

    There may be an existing tool for this, but I don’t remember it.

  • n0x0n@feddit.orgDeutsch
    2·
    2 months ago

    You’re looking for a block level incremental backup solution. This can either be achieved using filesystem based snapshots (ZFS, BRRFS) or using dedicated programs. I know rdiff-backup , restic and duplicity use block-level diffs, not sure about rsnapshot.

  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
    21·
    2 months ago

    I haven’t tried such a thing, but I remember ZFS has an option for block deduplication.

    So you would set up a ZFS with block deduplication (and probably without compression - try this point out), and then you make your backup images with the dd tool and the correct block size.

    Now you make always full copies and have them as normal files but they take only the disk space of the differences.

    let me know if I am going about the problem in a wrong way.

    I would not say “wrong way”. I’s fun to think about such things and try them out.

    On the other hand I think a FAT32 can have only 32Gb. I would not mind having many of them lying around on my home NAS that has 12 Tb on RAID :-)