Creating entire disk images using fsarchiver

fsarchiver is a tool which can save the contents of a complete filesystem to a compressed archive file. Due to these abilities, it is one of the most complete and easy to use tools for backup.

fsarchiver is the successor of partimage - the well-known filesystem backup solution. fsarchiver has the advantage of supporting newer filesystems like ext4 when compared to partimage , however the latter has a minimal GUI that makes it somewhat easier to use.

Getting ready

fsarchiver is not installed in most of the distros by default. You will have to manually install it using your package manager. If you want more information, go to http://www.fsarchiver.org/Installation

How to do it...

1. Creating a backup of a filesystem/partition

   Use the savefs option of fsarchiver like this:

   fsarchiver savefs backup.fsa /dev/sda1
   

   where backup.fsa is the final backup file and /dev/sda1 is the partition to backup

2. Backup more than one partition at the same time

   Use the savefs...