Backup the EMMC

[tso4ev]

hi all
I'm wondering if there is some way to backup the internal 64gb emmc to an sdcard
Raspberry pie uses a little app called SD card copier it would be nice if there is something like this for the pinebook pro
its very useful if we f*ck up the system just to restore it from the sd card would be amazing
and time consuming just copy back everything with all settings and stuff
hopefully somebody will come up with something

[Gerhard]

The command "dd" can do that.

Code:

dd if=(input device) of=(output device)

[agD0i7rY]

of can be a file which gives
dd if=(input device) of=save.img
so you can back up to any drive.
The image will be the size of the eemc

[tso4ev]

of can be a file which gives
dd if=(input device) of=save.img
so you can back up to any drive.
The image will be the size of the eemc

something like this
dd if=/dev/mmcblk1 of=save.img  status=progress ?

save.img will be stored on the emmc which is stupid becouse it can't sizewise..
mmcblk1 should be the internal emmc
of= how ti find the path to the sdcard ?

[wdt]

Err, you could cd to where you want the backup to be stored
And,, viz size, why would you not pipe it thru gzip?
cd wherever; dd if=/dev/mmcblk1|gzip - > backup{date}
and restore,,, zcat backup |dd of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=1M

[Der Geist der Maschine]

The running system creates files on the fly such as /dev. A backup should not back up such files.

It's better to create the backup from a system booted off micro SD card. From there you can use dd or dd | gzip the emmc card and store it on an external usb drive or scp it over the network.

Before you create the backup, it's advised to first create and then delete a huge file on the emmc card consisting of zeros (dd if=/dev/zero of=zeros) so that gzip can nicely compress the dd'ed image.

[tso4ev]

thanks to everyone it would be nice if somebody made a tutorial for that (so other new users like me benefit from it)

[Arwen]

Yes, a tutorial would be nice.

Using "dd" is less than ideal for backups. Meaning if you backup your 64GB eMMC and decide to restore it to a SD card, the card MUST be at least 64GB. And in some cases that I have experienced with SATA DOMs, you may have to go up 1 size. (Imagine trying to restore 64GBs to a 63.999GB SD card that calls it's self 64GB.)

I tend to use more advanced, and flexible methods of backup, (Rsync, EXT4 dump, etc...). But, those tend to be more complex that the simple example of "dd".

[neilman]

Yes, a tutorial would be nice.

Using "dd" is less than ideal for backups. Meaning if you backup your 64GB eMMC and decide to restore it to a SD card, the card MUST be at least 64GB. And in some cases that I have experienced with SATA DOMs, you may have to go up 1 size. (Imagine trying to restore 64GBs to a 63.999GB SD card that calls it's self 64GB.)

I tend to use more advanced, and flexible methods of backup, (Rsync, EXT4 dump, etc...). But, those tend to be more complex that the simple example of "dd".

On my windows PC's I use a program called Macrium Reflect - it takes shadow copies of a hard drive, only saving "active sectors" and applies some compression before saving to an external hard drive. The file it saves is later accessible for individual file retrieval or can rebuild a complete new drive from the saved image.

Is there anything vaguely like that in "ARM" land?

I have a 128GB eMMC in my Pinebook Pro would that otherwise need a 256GB external device to save it to?

[tso4ev]

yep dd take me around 4 hours to make a backup