[SOLVED] duplicate/clone an xbian installation

[mk01]

(4th Nov, 2013 11:30 AM)Exnor Wrote:  Dont know if this will help you, but i always clone my SDcard with xbian to my 2nd Pi with Norton Ghost 8.0... its old soft but runs well on win7 & 8...

No issue so far.. in fact i keep an image of a stable setup on backup just in case i mess up any of the Pi's

just a note that yes, offline copy like this will always work, but the benefit of using XBian's provided tools is that you don't have to touch RPI (shutdown, sd crd manipulation etc) and second not of lower significance that only used space is transfered, what is free on card, is skipped. so 16gb card with 1gb install will take the time relevant to transfer 1gb, not 16gb. and you can later flash it back to small sd again.

[Exnor]

(5th Nov, 2013 08:35 PM)mk01 Wrote:  

(4th Nov, 2013 11:30 AM)Exnor Wrote:  Dont know if this will help you, but i always clone my SDcard with xbian to my 2nd Pi with Norton Ghost 8.0... its old soft but runs well on win7 & 8...

No issue so far.. in fact i keep an image of a stable setup on backup just in case i mess up any of the Pi's

just a note that yes, offline copy like this will always work, but the benefit of using XBian's provided tools is that you don't have to touch RPI (shutdown, sd crd manipulation etc) and second not of lower significance that only used space is transfered, what is free on card, is skipped. so 16gb card with 1gb install will take the time relevant to transfer 1gb, not 16gb. and you can later flash it back to small sd again.

I will give a try on the tools

On a side note: using partition cloning (not drive cloning) options, i think it only copies the written data.

[mk01]

@Exnor,

There is no reason to try for you if you already have your bad habits.

But we can still save some newcomers

[Exnor]

(6th Nov, 2013 02:43 PM)mk01 Wrote:  @Exnor,

There is no reason to try for you if you already have your bad habits.

But we can still save some newcomers

lol they are not that bad

[mk01]

(2nd Jun, 2013 06:27 AM)effemmeffe Wrote:  thanks. so i have to conclude there is no safe way to backup all my sd from inside the system, the only way would be remove the sd, put it in a card reader and dd it on an external system. not very friendly...

this is no more valid for Beta1.1 and newer XBian. You can create an atomic freeze on filesystem with finished transactions and backups / restore this. BTRFS filesystem can do it.

Beta2 even includes user tools for this for use directly from XBMC or SSH.

[effemmeffe]

Thanks, this is a good news.
I saw some new options in xbian-config, but didn't dig.
I'll give a try as soon I have some spare time.