Backing up USB drive - blockdev --getsize64 then what?

[Fog_Newb]

Hi,

When backing up different drives, I’ve been changing the Host Primary Disk settings to specify the drive. I use the disk size. I have to do this for systems with NVME systems (assuming the nvme drive size is different). Today I need to back up and external USB drive. I wasn’t sure how to get the size of that using the blockdev command.

The scenario is;

Backing up external Wii U drive, an external 1TB SSD using a laptop with 2 internal 250GB SSDs. What steps should I take to get the correct Host Primary Disk settings for backing up the external drive?

Thank you

[Sebastian Roth]

@Fog_Newb Well, what’s the output of blockdev --getsize64 ... for the external drive?

Not sure I understand your question? You’d simply put that number into the Host Primary Disk field.

[Fog_Newb]

@Sebastian-Roth This is going to sound really dumb but I don’t know how to query FOS to figure out how the USB drive will be listed. Like to find out what /dev/???

[Sebastian Roth]

@Fog_Newb To get a list of the so called block devices you can use the command lsblk. If you are not sure which one is which you can get the partition table and also disk name/vendor by running fdisk -l /dev/... for each of the devices.

[Fog_Newb]

@Sebastian-Roth Thank you so much.

Have there been any updates in dealing with dual NVMe drives that are the same size?

[Sebastian Roth]

@Fog_Newb said in Backing up USB drive - blockdev --getsize64 then what?:

Have there been any updates in dealing with dual NVMe drives that are the same size?

Yes, you can use disk serial as well.

[Fog_Newb]

@Sebastian-Roth

That is awesome. I tried using a power-shell command to get the drive serial number.

 Get-PhysicalDisk | FT FriendlyName,AdapterSerialNumber,serialnumber 

Just to confirm, what this command lists as the Adapter Serial Number matches what Crystal Disk Info shows as the NVMe serial numbers as well as the serial number listed on the box the NVMe came in. Just to note, the SSD’s do not have an Adapter serial number

Thanks again for all you help.

[Fog_Newb]

@Sebastian-Roth Unfortunately the USB external drive wasn’t see by FOG, I tried the serial number listed in Windows but it backed up an NVMe drive Please disregard