1 EXFATDUMP(8) EXFATDUMP(8)
6 fatdump - Efficiently dump the contents of an FAT volume.
9 fatdump [options] device|image
12 fatdump will efficiently extract all relevant metadata and (optionally)
13 data from an FAT volume and dump it to standard output. It works at
14 disk sector level and copies only the used data. Unused disk space
17 fatdump can be useful to make backups, an exact snapshot of an FAT
18 filesystem to restore later on, or for developers to trou‐
19 bleshoot/investigate users' issues using the clone without the risk of
20 destroying the original filesystem.
23 Below is a summary of all the options that fatdump accepts. Nearly all
24 options have two equivalent names. The short name is preceded by - and
25 the long name is preceded by -- .
28 Clone ONLY METADATA (for FAT experts). A metadata dump contains
29 all of the FAT volume structures but none of the user data, i.e.
30 all file content will be omitted but the directory structure
31 will be preserved. The output from this command will be rela‐
32 tively small if compressed.
35 Emit an ntfsclone packed image (special image format) as output.
36 This saves space since all the non-allocated regions (and in the
37 case of '-m' /'--metadata' all the non-metadata regions) will
38 not be written out explicitly, but instead marked as a 'hole' in
42 Suppress non-error output on stderr.
45 Force a clone, ignoring errors from cluster accounting.
48 The exit code is 0 on success, non-zero otherwise.
51 Dump FAT file system on /dev/sda1 to a compressed metadata image:
53 fatdump /dev/sda1 | bzip2 > sda1.img.bz2
55 Dump FAT file system metadata on /dev/sda1 to a compressed metadata
58 fatdump -m /dev/sda1 | bzip2 > sda1.img.bz2
60 Dump an FAT volume to a remote host, using ssh. Please note that ssh
61 may ask for a password!
63 fatdump /dev/sda1 | bzip2 | ssh host 'cat > sda1.img.bzip2'
67 There are no known problems with fatdump. If you think you have found
68 a problem then please send an email describing it to fat-support@tux‐
72 fatdump was written by Sougata Santra, Tuxera Inc.
75 fatdump is part of the Tuxera FAT package.
82 Tuxera TFATprogs 3013.7.17 June 2013 EXFATDUMP(8)