Need to write an NTFS volume to tape under FreeBSD

[RevennaFox]

I like how easy it is to recover/clone a FreeBSD system with just a live CD and a tape, and I'd like to be able to do that with my Windows machines as well. I thought about using dump, but mounting my Windows disk under /windows with Fuse FS and running dump results in an error message

dump: /windows: unknown file system

I also thought about using dd, but it seems to want to create an image the same size as the partition, 112 GB, even though there's only 23 GB of data on it. I can use gzip to compress it down to 12 GB, but it takes hours and is kind of cumbersome. Is there an easy way to image an NTFS drive to a tape from FreeBSD, or failing that, is there a boot disc somewhere that supports it?

 

[bigb89]

Is there any special reason as to you using FreeBSD to clone an NTFS filesystem?

This is one of the rare occasions where I think you might be better off just using the Windows VSS (Shadow copies) feature to create NTFS backups/copies of the NTFS filesystem, since it is specifically designed for that.

 

[wblock@]

sysutils/ntfsprogs has ntfsclone. It uses FUSE, which I have not tested on FreeBSD 10. Clonezilla uses ntfsclone to back up NTFS partitions, and has worked very well for me.

 

[fonz]

I also thought about using dd, but it seems to want to create an image the same size as the partition, 112 GB, even though there's only 23 GB of data on it.

That would be correct, that's what dd does; it works on a device level.

 

[kpa]

I also thought about using dd, but it seems to want to create an image the same size as the partition, 112 GB, even though there's only 23 GB of data on it.

That would be correct, that's what dd does; it works on a device level.

It actually works on just files and devices are just files on any UNIX or UNIX-like OS. There are of course some details that apply to only block devices like block size but essentially it's all just files.

 

[fonz]

I also thought about using dd, but it seems to want to create an image the same size as the partition, 112 GB, even though there's only 23 GB of data on it.

That would be correct, that's what dd does; it works on a device level.

It actually works on just files and devices are just files on any UNIX or UNIX-like OS. There are of course some details that apply to only block devices like block size but essentially it's all just files.

Sure, that's true. But it works on individual files (e.g. files on a filesystem and devices), not on collections of files (i.e. the actually used space on a filesystem)