Re: Copying a disk containing a btrfs filesystem

[Michael Schuerig <michael.lists@schuerig.de>]

On Thursday 10 April 2014 18:01:31 George Eleftheriou wrote:
> > What makes the case complicate is
> > not the question how to preserve and copy the current data; it's how
> > to retain the historic data embodied in snapshots.
> 
> You can always rsync (incrementally with --link-dest) to "another
> place" the sequence of snapshots, provided of course there is enough
> space in this "other place". However I understand this may not be the
> coolest thing to do especially taking into account the SMART warnings
> for imminent deterioration.

In the case at hand, I'll go with ddrescue. As far as backups are 
concerned, rsync --link-dest may be an option, however even at best it 
would only give file-granularity COW as opposed to block-granularity. 
I'm not sure if this would work for me in terms of disk space 
consumption.

I *think* send/receive with clone sources might be the key to a 
solution. I'm still hoping that someone with a far better understanding 
of btrfs than me gives it a try first...

Michael

-- 
Michael Schuerig
mailto:michael@schuerig.de
http://www.schuerig.de/michael/