Arch Linux

Kane

Member

Registered: 2006-10-08

Posts: 220

Partimage

Hi guys,
dont know if this is the right place to be posting this but here goes.

I've just done a fresh install of arch, i installed xfce and created an image of my partition using partimage (ive just had a hdd go so i thought it was time to start making backups )
This image was around 800mb in size (compressed with gzip)

I then installed all my usual programs firefox, sonata etc and thought id make another image just incase.
However even though ive used alot more space ( i think with all programs installed my disk space usage went up by 1G maybe?) the image size of the partition has now reduced to around 600-700mb

I used the same compression, so im just wondering why this has happened?
I cant really restore the image anywhere to find out if theres a problem, but the image seemed to be completed successfully

Is this something to do with the way the hdd space is utilised?

Thanks
Kane

calef13

Member

Registered: 2007-06-10

Posts: 142

Re: Partimage

I don't know anything about partition backups, but maybe the new programs allowed gzip to perform more efficient compression. It's a long shot, but I think it's still possible.

bender02

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-02-04

Posts: 1,328

Re: Partimage

Didn't you clean up pacman cache or something like that in the meantime? Otherwise - it indeed looks strange. I checked the partimage website, and it says that it backs up only those blocks that are used by some file (and so down the drain goes my initial idea that you didn't scrub the old data off of the partition and they were incompressible).

fed359

Member

Registered: 2007-11-21

Posts: 46

Re: Partimage

I've never used partimage before, but I'd venture a guess that it uses incremental or differential backups

bender02

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-02-04

Posts: 1,328

Re: Partimage

I've never used partimage before, but I'd venture a guess that it uses incremental or differential backups

I seriously doubt it. I have yet to see a program which does incremental partition images... I checked the documentation of partimage, and didn't find anything about incremental backups.

fed359

Member

Registered: 2007-11-21

Posts: 46

Re: Partimage

I've never used partimage before, but I'd venture a guess that it uses incremental or differential backups

I seriously doubt it. I have yet to see a program which does incremental partition images... I checked the documentation of partimage, and didn't find anything about incremental backups.

Ghost and Acronis True Image both support incremental backups... although there isn't a mention of incremental or differential backups on their site, so I'm as confused as everyone else

Kane

Member

Registered: 2006-10-08

Posts: 220

Re: Partimage

I created another image but this time backed it up to a different hdd and its still the same 600~700mb
So either the 800mb image of plain xfce is somehow wrong or id just forgotten to clean out the cache lol
but i thought i remembered cleaning everything out so i had a "clean" image.

Ah well, ive got differential backups of the most important files anyway.

Thanks guys