How to backup an entire SD Card over a network

General Discussion
1

Hi All,

Does anyone know, how I can fully backup an entire SD card, that is running in a pi over a network onto a Windows PC using any software that is part of dietpi?

I know I could use Win32DiskImager, but that would mean powering down the system every time for a backup, which is not ideal.

Thanks :slight_smile:

2

well you could use standard Debian dd command. But cloning with dd from a running system can result in inconsistent images due to disk activity. And this will leave you with an img size similar to your SD card size where you would need other tools to shrink it afterwards.

Alternative you could try thinks like partclone. But partclone alone cannot create a fully bootable disk image from an entire disk or SD card. It only copies individual partitions, not the entire disk structure, partition table, or bootloader (e.g., MBR, GPT, GRUB).

3

I would like to backup the SD card over a network.

Would it be possible to use GParted using the GUI for the backups, once I have installed a desktop enviroment?

I don’t feel confident using a terminal with partclone commands?

Thanks

4

This I understood

I don’t know, never did something like this. You would need to try it yourself

As written above partclone alone is not the solution, because it only copies a part or a partition but not the complete SD card.