From owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Mon Jan 30 19:46:21 2017 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E38B3CC793F for ; Mon, 30 Jan 2017 19:46:21 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dpchrist@holgerdanske.com) Received: from holgerdanske.com (holgerdanske.com [184.105.128.27]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (Client CN "*.he.net", Issuer "GeoTrust SSL CA - G4" (verified OK)) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id C7BFAF7A for ; Mon, 30 Jan 2017 19:46:21 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dpchrist@holgerdanske.com) Received: from ::ffff:99.100.19.101 ([99.100.19.101]) by holgerdanske.com with ESMTPSA (AES128-SHA:SSLv3:Kx=RSA:Au=RSA:Enc=AES(128):Mac=SHA1) (SMTP-AUTH username dpchrist@holgerdanske.com, mechanism PLAIN) for ; Mon, 30 Jan 2017 11:46:15 -0800 Subject: Re: FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE-p7 i386 system drive imaging and migration To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <86bmupg0gi.fsf@WorkBox.homestead.org> <2973d1ea-202f-60fa-2930-eec05b626cfb@holgerdanske.com> From: David Christensen Message-ID: <455f87f9-3f1d-dc68-ac1d-8248a7e0f043@holgerdanske.com> Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2017 11:46:15 -0800 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD i386; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.6.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2017 19:46:22 -0000 On 01/30/17 07:28, Warren Block wrote: > On Sun, 29 Jan 2017, David Christensen wrote: > >>> Writing SSDs with dd is not good, limiting their wear leveling. >> >> That's why I used zcat rather than dd for writing to the cloned SSD. >> If/when I know enough to use zfs send/ receive, that will be best. > > zcat is no different than dd in this case. When you write a binary > image, the SSD can't tell which blocks are truly in use, because they > have all been written. Taking the image with 'dd' will grab all blocks -- in-use, used, never used (zero-freed and available for writing). On restoration, it all gets written. Yes, it's wasteful. But it's 2+ steps I can do by hand off the top of my head; rather than 18+ steps, most of which I've never done. I used 'zcat' in the hope that many 512 byte blocks would be sent to the SSD per system call, rather than 'dd' making one system call for each and every 512 byte block. (I also experimented with 'bs=1M', but adding 'conv=sync' resulted in a bad destination image.) Given the microcontroller and RAM buffer in the SSD, it might not matter. David