If you don't perform an image backup, don't backup the /proc, /sys, /dev or /tmp partitions. The first two are psuedo filesystems. /dev is created when you boot, and backing up /tmp would be a waste of time. You can also use tar, which is what dump would use.
Quote:
HDD's sizes must be the same
|
Yes, if you restore the image. You could however create your partitions on a new drive, and then mount the partitions that exists in the image backup. Now you can simply copy them to the new hard drive.
Run "fdisk -lu" to print out the starting points of each partition on your system. You can use the offsets with losetup to attach a loop device at that offset. A hard copy printout of the "fdisk -lu" results will make this process easy.
sudo /sbin/losetup -fs -o $((512*<offset>))
sudo mount -t <filesystem> /dev/loop# /mnt
Where offset is the block offset to the start of the partition. loop# is the loop device, such as /dev/loop0, which the losetup command returns.