My questions now are:

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Backup SSD as image

rated 0 times [ 0] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 4001 / 2 Years ago, sat, january 8, 2022, 9:58:50

I want to backup an existing SSD on a new notebook with a pre-installed Windows, Recovery Partition, ... before I wipe it and install Ubuntu on it. (It is too small for a dual-boot)

Until now I have been using dd for that kind of situation. But now I have read on various sites that dd isn't a good choice for SSDs. These are the things I came across:

dd also fills empty areas with 0s reducing spare area. This makes sense to me

dd may mess with alignment. I tried reading up on alignment but I still didn't get it entirely. If I do a bitwise copy of a SSD and later put it back on the same drive shouldn't this make them totally identical including any alignment?

dd puts unnecessary wear on a SSD. I understand that it would be better to only write areas with actual data, but is this really such an issue on a modern SSD?

My questions now are:

Do the things stated above make sense? (This is just for personal interest, my main questions follow)

Is dd therefore a safe choice for backup/restore of a whole SSD drive?

If not, is Clonezilla better suited?

Otherwise: What is the best way to go?

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ersoggles

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2 Years ago

answered 2 Years ago dicatandyca · Accepted Answer

dd also fills empty areas with 0s reducing spare area

true, it is far from space efficient.

dd may mess with alignment

Memory chips do not have cylinders and heads, but they do have pages. Some chips were/are quicker reading within the same page as switching to a different page. However these timings differences are very low and if you copy to the same ssd it will not differ because it are the same chips.

I understand that it would be better to only write areas with actual
data, but is this really such an issue on a modern SSD?

No. Maybe the other way round, if you place backups on your SSD but reading the chips is not causing any wear and writes are at least close to a million on current SSD's. I hope you don't plan on restoring that often. :)

So I would call dd safe if you know how to use it and would not care too much about wear and alignment. Space considerations you can consider yourself. Dd is easy but at a cost of space and time while doing the backup. Clonezilla is a smarter way but an additional program which you also need to install before restoring.

Just a matter of preference I guess...