Modified files during a partition or disk backup
When I start a disk or partition backup on Windows 8, presumably files will almost always be modified while the backup process is running. I started a backup, and confirmed that the hard drive wasn't "locked down", and Windows was still letting me write to files, so presumably all the other stuff running in the background will be modifying files too. How does Backupper deal with this? Will the backup contain the state of the partition or disk at the moment the backup started (ie all writes are somehow queue'd)? Or, is it reading the disk blocks as it goes, meaning the blocks could get modified while Backupper is reading them and then on restore some files would be corrupted?
thanks for any insight... In the past I always just booted Linux on a USB stick to backup my Windows system since I could lock the drive and use dd to duplicate the partition. But on my new laptop I just can't get Linux to boot, so I'm trying to find an alternative to safely backup the whole partition.
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the backup contain the state of the partition or disk at the moment the backup started.
@bergenp0 read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Copy
It may shed some light how AOMEI Backupper (and some other backup softwares, including windows' standard wbadmin start backup do this).
On linux, there are also filesystems which support similar functionality, but usually it's called snapshots.