On 14/09/06, Sebastien Tremblay <sebastien.tremblay at au.cmpmedica.com> > I know there is none at the moment which > is why I was looking into dd and tar. I've read that dd physically > read/write every blocks of the disk whereas tar handles `zero-files` > differently... Thus my question! I suspect dd-ing from an active disk isn't necessarily the best of ideas. You can: # dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb ... one identical disk to another, or at least to another with the same geometry. If both disks are unmounted you'll get a consistent snap-shot of the system. Doing similar with an active, mounted /dev/sda on a running system wouldn't guarantee the consitancy of the "backup". I think you'd be better partitioning up your disks similarly and tar-ing, though you mention 'zero-files', do you mean sparse files? In which case special measure may be required for those? Will.