What backup software?

[Rashkae]

Smoot Carl-Mitchell wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-08-10 at 19:41 -0500, Chris Mohler wrote:
>> On Sun, Aug 10, 2008 at 6:19 PM, Christian <christian08 at runbox.com> wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>> I am looking for a disk backup software that can backup any partition to
>>> an image and restore it at a later time.
>>> What backup software would you recommend?
>>>  Many thanks,
>>> Christian
>> I've always just used dd:
>>
>> dd if=/dev/sdaX of=/path/to/file.img
>>
>> will copy from partition to image, where "X" is a partition number on
>> sda.  Then:
>>
>> dd if=/path/to/file.img of=/dev/sdaX
> 
> This is not generally a good idea.  If your disk has bad sectors which
> are mapped out by the filesystem, then the dd will hang. It is better to
> do backups at the filesystem level and not at the disk level.
> 

I agree that dd isn't the best solution if a filesystem backup utility
exists.  However, if your drive has OS visible bad sectors, it's time
for a new HD.  (Modern drives should themselves re-map bad sectors..
this is no longer something the FS should do unless things are really,
*really* bad.)