Verifying a clone

[webatomic]

Is there some preferred method for verifying a cloned drive? Some quick way of checking that everything is as it should be?

[dnanian]

Starting up from it is often a good check...

[webatomic]

Is there some preferred method for verifying a cloned drive? Some quick way of checking that everything is as it should be?

Right. I figured out that much. But from that point, are there any tips on what to check, or ways to quickly compare it against the source drive to make sure it's all good?

I'm figuring on this being a regular thing, so I'd like to have some kind of simple routine to go through, unless you think simply booting to the clone is proof enough that it's an exact duplicate of the original.

[dnanian]

There's really no way to verify. And, frankly, with a live system it's changing constantly. By the time you get around to 'checking' it, it's different.

[webatomic]

So you recommend to boot from it and then move on basically, yes?

[dnanian]

My general suggestion is to have more than one backup. It's faster to create and maintain two backups then it is to verify one, and it has additional benefits, too. :)

[garoomph]

My general suggestion is to have more than one backup.

When I clone into an image I want to verify that before multiplying it.

I tried rsync --dry-run --checksum, but it only displays results at the very end, which is annoying for tens of gigabytes.

[dnanian]

Understood. It's not something we have a solution for at present.