well i figure 2.5 hrs should have been enough time to bzip2 a 971MB partition, but it is still sitting there with 100% cpu usage and 50% swap used.
i don't think it is working...
robh,
I suspect you will need to do the following.
Boot from livecd sudo mount <your external hdd> <mount Point> cd <mount point> bzip2 -1c < /dev/hda > myhdimage.img.bz2thats it, i've had it with backing up my install. i think i'm gonna just fly solo and damn the consequences.
thanks for your slightly more verbose help brianw, but it seems that i'm not yet understanding the syntax/code enough to perform this task. i followed your above advice and the cpu has been maxed out for an hour now, with no sign of my compressed drive image coming out the other end.
i can wipe this 3.2 GB drive with all zeros in about 10 mins, so i reckon that an hour should be plenty of time to wait.
SaidinUnleashed described this as the "most efficient way" of imaging, but i'm on day 3 of trying now and still no luck. The man page for bzip2 is as dry and uninformative to a newbie, who is trying to learn the concepts of linux, as ~J.P.'s advice. Sorry J.P. but i want to know what the command is doing and what the operands are doing to further understand. i tried the one liner that you gave me to no avail, maybe i'm just not up to the skill level required for using linux.