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System backup tests


sunrat

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Inspired by a thread on MX forums, I just did a test of several backup programs to test their speed, efficiency, and ease of use. All tests were run from a PartedMagic live USB key and backed up a siduction installation on a 25.9GB partition which had 12.1GB of data.

 

G4L, default options Lzop compression - took under 2 minutes but image was 16.3GB

fsarchiver, default options gzip standard compression - under 2 minutes, image 5.7GB

fsarchiver, bz2 compression - 20minutes, image 5.3GB

Redo Backup, default (not configurable) - 6 minutes, 6.1GB

Clonezilla, default, gzip - about 3.5 minutes including image verification, 6.1GB

 

I'm sure changing from default options would make a difference as all but Redo can use different compression.

For ease of use, Redo is the simplest as it has no options. Clonezilla and G4L are both a bit complicated but are quite configurable.

fsarchiver really impressed me though with it's easy to understand GUI while still having options for compression type, splitting, and even allocation of the number of CPU cores. I will be using it for my system backups in future.

Edit - it seems the GUI is called qt-fsarchiver which is currently not in Debian but available from Sourceforge and several distros. The .deb from SF won't install in siduction due to dependencies so I'll have to stick to running it from PartedMagic.

 

http://www.fsarchiver.org/

 

mainmenu.png

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securitybreach

Neat. I have mostly only ever used Clonezilla and I run it about every 3 months to clone my OS harddrive. I have to clone the entire drive as its encrypted but luckily clonezilla only clones the used the space. Nice that there are other decent options. I will probably stick to the tried and true Clonzilla though.

 

I do like that the one you posted the shot of has a "Notes on the backup" function. That is super useful as my only notes are to name the backup with today's date ;)

 

 

Very nice review :thumbup:

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Yes I've used Clonezilla for years. One nice thing about qt-fsarchiver is that everything is on one screen. Tick a couple of boxes, select partition and backup location, then "Save Partition". Quick and easy. It has a full disk clone option too, icon at the top.

All the others have multiple screens to work through and Clonezilla is the slowest to actually get started. It does give the option to verify backup is restoreable which is reassuring.

I agree the notes feature in qt-fsarchiver is great.

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  • 2 weeks later...
securitybreach

but what about restoring the backups?

I have done that successfully several times with Clonezilla, but not with fs-archiver.

 

 

Same :thumbsup:

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