Hi,

search did not reveal solution to my problem, thus 'new topic'

Task: backing up variety of sd-cards (ext3, ext4, with/without MBR, etc.) i.e. couple of Ubuntu micro-servers (raspis, anything with a plug'in SD-CARD) backing up to a disk-file on a WIN11 station and writing out to another bootable SD-Card.

Findings so far:
1.) ext3 + MBR: hddguru:no / acronis:yes
2.) pure ext4: hddguru:not / acronis:not

Any 'all purpose tool' around (on WIN11) ... ???

cheers - dp

... remembered my ubuntu raspi-5, snoozing around. dd did the job: dd sd-card to file, dd file to new sd-card. New sd-card plugged in and voila, micro-server back again. file and old sd-card are my backup options.

I suppose, that WIN hides the block structure of a device, thus the WIN tools are not capable to perform a comprehensive 1:1 block copy. Besides mounted partitions unix offers a block device under /dev, so no tricks necessary to access every block from start to end.

It's a good learning - a backup, that does not fail with error message is no guarantee, that a restore is working. Have to crap my old backups, sic.

have you tried WSL

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install

thanks for hint to this, must admit 'no'. My notebook is shared for office / personal use.
I've installed WSL time ago and felt some degrade of performance / 'snippy'nes - no more click'n go, but more click'n ... think ... go.
I did a deletion of WSL (which is an exercice by itself) and performance was back again.

Not checking ma backups for restoring capability was my fault, just throw in sdcard, hddguru to some archive, done job.
One of my micros failed on reboot ... and the backup was garbage --> this post )

Verify backups by burning a sdcard from the backup and check it is working, just my 2 cents ...