On 27 Mar 2009 at 12:42, Bill Crawford wrote: From: Bill Crawford <billcrawford1970@xxxxxxxxx> Organization: None To: fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Backing up system Date sent: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:42:56 +0000 Copies to: "Michael D. Setzer II" <mikes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > On Friday 27 March 2009 09:01:30 Michael D. Setzer II wrote: > > > It does work best if you clear unused space before doing an image to reduce > > space since the null filled sectors compress to almost nothing. > > How do you do that? The cd has various scripts and programs on it to help. cleandrive is the simplest script that free space for linux/unix. dd if=/dev/zero of=/0bits bs=20M rm /0bits That script does it, but no feedback on process. cleandrive5 and cleandrive6 do the same but use Dialog or Xdialog to provide a progress bar. The require the appropriate dialog program be installed and the jetcat-mod program copied to the / directory. For fat32 and ntfs partitions blank6.exe can be used to clear free space for Windows. The is a lblank6 linux program that does a similar task from linux on the mounted fat32 or ntfs partition. Additionally, there are other programs on the web that do this. Long ago, I had done a Fedora 3 full install on a 80GB disk, and did an image. Produced a 12GB compressed image file. Then cleared unused space, and redid image. Only a 2.5GB image file. So, the random information from the drive took 9.5GB of space. +----------------------------------------------------------+ Michael D. Setzer II - Computer Science Instructor Guam Community College Computer Center mailto:mikes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx mailto:msetzerii@xxxxxxxxx http://www.guam.net/home/mikes Guam - Where America's Day Begins +----------------------------------------------------------+ http://setiathome.berkeley.edu (Original) Number of Seti Units Returned: 19,471 Processing time: 32 years, 290 days, 12 hours, 58 minutes (Total Hours: 287,489) BOINC@HOME CREDITS SETI 7,566,804.7045 | EINSTEIN 2,416,953.8009 | ROSETTA 838,646.7327 -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines