Hi Ia, thanks for your reply ! :)
The usbstick I want to make an initial backup is 64GB of size. That means, I will backup mostly zeroes. Where are the partioning/format defining on the device? If there are only stored the beginning of the device: How much do I need to copy? or: If there are tools to extract all needed informations of the partioning/formatting and to recreate exactly that kind of partitioning/formatting later with that or other tools: Which tools do I need and how to use them? Thank you very much in advance for any help! Best regards, Meino Ian Bloss <ianlin...@gmail.com> [16-03-29 18:12]: > If you're gonna dd a drive you either go the same space or larger. To be > sure you get everything you can just > > dd if=/dev/oldstick of=/dev/newstick > > Replacing old/newstick with the correct device. > > You can even keep a backup image with > > dd if=/dev/oldstick of=/home/user/whateveryounamedit.img > > Which you then can replicate to any drive > > dd if=/home/user/whateveryounamedit.img of=/dev/newdevice > > On Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 11:43 <meino.cra...@gmx.de> wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > since companies know their usbstick internals best, they > > format their drives in a way, that the performance is best. > > > > That's why I want to make a complete image "backup" of my > > new usbstick first before using it in case of needing to > > reset the whole thing. > > > > The stick is a 64GB vfat formatted device. > > > > How much of the usbstick do I need to dd/pv from > > the stick to preserve *all* informations to do a > > "true factory reset" later if needed? > > > > Thank you very much in advance for any help! > > Best regards, > > Meino > > > > > > > > > > > >