Clone Deciso appliance harddisk to file (for macOS only)

[sdetroch]

Hello all,

I needed a way to clone my Deciso 750 SSD to a file (to be able to restore later on the whole installation after a crash or hardware issue). Since booting CloneZilla via an USB stick didn't worked out, I started creating a simple script that was able to do the same from my Mac. A couple of hours later and with some help from AI, an interactive script to clone and restore from/to NVMe was born. Claude assisted in refactoring and here it is. Should be able to handle other use-cases as well (e.g. upgrading to a larger SSD, cloning other appliances etc).

To be able to read the SSD you will need a M.2 SSD NVMe enclosure, I can recommend this one for speed and reliability on Mac, but others should work as well.

If interested, have a look at:
https://github.com/svendt/Clone-NVMe-for-MacOS

Feedback welcome (and be careful when opening the appliance to retrieve the SSD, warranty might be voided).

[patient0]

You open the DEC750 and remove the NVMe, install it in an enclosure, backup/restore, insert the NVMe again, reapply the thermal paste on the DEC750 and close it; everytime for the backup/restore?

In your GH description at least include as the very first step that the disk has to be removed from the device and installed in an enclosure for the following steps to work
If you already have the disk in an enclosure, there are ton's of tools to backup/restore.

And: it can be done using Clonezilla directly, in the grub menu, edit whichever boot entry you want to use and add at the end:

Code Select Expand

live-getty console=ttyS0,115200n81 ocs_live_run_tty=/dev/ttyS0
That uses the serial console as the output device.

The available boot parameter can be found https://clonezilla.org/fine-print-live-doc.php?path=clonezilla-live/doc/99_Misc/00_live-boot-parameters.doc

[sdetroch]

Thanks for the feedback!

1) I only do this once (or at least exceptional), because the "daily" OpnSense changes are saved to the configuration.xml backup file.

2) In meantime I made the script and descriptions more generic, I assume that anyone using this type of script knows that the SSD should be removed and installed in an enclosure. Should work for other use-cases now as well.

3) I had issues to get anything booted from USB stick on my 750 appliance (could be a local issue), solved by this script since my FreeBSD system is not changing that much. Wanted to have a certain point-in-time disk clone to have a fallback when the disk crashes.

4) Other tools available? Most probably yes, but the more tools, the more choice :)

[Monviech (Cedrik)]

If I need a full image I use "dd".

You cn chain "dd" with a zipping tool and scp filetransfer in a single command and then set it as cron job.

It will then dd -> zip the output -> transfer it via ssh to a target. I use that for raspberry pies for example.

But of course thats overdesigned, most of the time only the config.xml is sufficient for restore.

[nero355]

If I need a full image I use "dd".

I use that for raspberry pies for example.

But of course thats overdesigned, most of the time only the config.xml is sufficient for restore.

+1 :)

If you have got a Mac then you have got DD too just like any other Linux/*BSD based OS and that's all you need IMHO.

No need for silly "Machine Learning Chatbot" created scripts...