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IFL insists on backing up unused sectors in GPT partition.

Posted: Sun Dec 17, 2017 2:09 am
by jeffw_00
Hi - I have a new i7 32GB PC onto which I installed Centos 7.3 from their ISO media. The df -l command tells me the main partition has about 64GB on it. I added a 2nd SATA disk. I downloaded the latest IFL release and ran Makedisk on a Windows PC to make a 3.15 IFL CD. I loaded the CD into the CentOS machine, booted into IFL, and tried to do a full backup from the main disk to the 2nd (empty 160GB) disk. I used Boot-IT Bare Metal to see there were 3 partitions on the main disk.

a 200MiB EFI partition
a 1024 MiB "Linux Native" partition
and the main 19065504 MiB "GPT" partition.

I tried a backup of the whole disk, and of just the partitions, but either way, for the GPT, partition, it wants to backup the -entire- partition, even though only ~144GB is in use. I am not Backing up Unused Sectors, and I am Omitting Pagefile, etc.

how do I get it to ignore unused sectors in the GPT partition?

Thanks!
/j

Re: IFL insists on backing up unused sectors in GPT partition.

Posted: Sun Dec 17, 2017 4:56 am
by TeraByte Support
needs to be a supported file system (ext 2,3,4/resierfs/xfs/fat/fat32/ntfs)


"jeffw_00" wrote in message news:14519@public.image...

Hi - I have a new i7 32GB PC onto which I installed Centos 7.3 from their
ISO media. The df -l command tells me the main partition has about 64GB on
it. I added a 2nd SATA disk. I downloaded the latest IFL release and ran
Makedisk on a Windows PC to make a 3.15 IFL CD. I loaded the CD into the
CentOS machine, booted into IFL, and tried to do a full backup from the main
disk to the 2nd (empty 160GB) disk. I used Boot-IT Bare Metal to see there
were 3 partitions on the main disk.

a 200MiB EFI partition
a 1024 MiB "Linux Native" partition
and the main 19065504 MiB "GPT" partition.

I tried a backup of the whole disk, and of just the partitions, but either
way, for the GPT, partition, it wants to backup the -entire- partition,
even though only ~144GB is in use. I am not Backing up Unused Sectors, and
I am Omitting Pagefile, etc.

how do I get it to ignore unused sectors in the GPT partition?

Thanks!
/j


Re: IFL insists on backing up unused sectors in GPT partitio

Posted: Sun Dec 17, 2017 2:05 pm
by jeffw_00
Thanks for the response, especially on a weekend. But are you saying I'm SOL w.r.t. IFL? That's a bummer!

FWIW: I didn't choose the file system. I downloaded the CentOS (Open Source RedHat) install ISO, burned it to a DVD, and installed to a PC with an unformatted disk. So - Is it possible you will support this file system in the future? As it's possible you will hear this from more potential customers (CentOS is not unpopular :-)).

Thanks!
/j

Re: IFL insists on backing up unused sectors in GPT partitio

Posted: Sun Dec 17, 2017 9:56 pm
by TeraByte Support
what file system are you using?

you can typically choose it during installation.

Also of course for LVM's, see the lvm.txt document in the help folder (when
you unzip).


"jeffw_00" wrote in message news:14524@public.image...

Thanks for the response, especially on a weekend. But are you saying I'm
SOL w.r.t. IFL? That's a bummer!

FWIW: I didn't choose the file system. I downloaded the CentOS (Open
Source RedHat) install ISO, burned it to a DVD, and installed to a PC with
an unformatted disk. So - Is it possible you will support this file system
in the future? As it's possible you will hear this from more potential
customers (CentOS is not unpopular

![:-)]({SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif)

).

Thanks!
/j


Re: IFL insists on backing up unused sectors in GPT partitio

Posted: Sun Dec 17, 2017 11:10 pm
by jeffw_00
Hi - I don't remember getting a choice to be honest (or if I did I let it use the default - thinking it would be the best for the O/S). So again, I expect others may run into this down the road. Although from what I'm reading, people seem to suggest that if the disk dies you should reinstall the latest O/S, which suggests that a gzip file backup will be sufficient... If I make sure I capture my yum log and the /etc folder I should be able to put everything back together.

Anyway -. It was just that IFW et. al., has been so awesome for me over the years I just -assumed- it did everything :-)

best
/j