Notes on using dd to clone Debian 13.4.0 KDE Plasma installation on my Edxis Chromebook model LI9

Subject: Notes on using dd to clone Debian 13.4.0 KDE Plasma installation on my Edxis Chromebook model LI9

Good day from Singapore,

Detailed steps as shown below.

1. Prepare USB thumb drive with System Rescue 13.00 for amd64. This is a 1.22 GB ISO file download.

2. Boot up Edxis Chromebook or your laptop or your desktop computer or your server with System Rescue 13.00 USB thumb drive.

3. Connect a portable USB external harddisk to the Edxis Chromebook using a USB 3.0 Hub.

4. Use the following Linux commands:

# mkdir /backup

Assuming your portable USB external harddisk is /dev/sdb1

# mount /dev/sdb1 /backup

# dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4M status=progress | gzip -1 > /backup/emmc.img.gz

🔍 Explanation

bs=4M → good speed for eMMC

status=progress → shows progress

conv=fsync → ensures proper flushing (safer image)

gzip -1 → fast compression (important for you)

👉 -1 is key:

Much faster than default (-6)

Slightly larger file, but saves a lot of time

The filesize of my emmc.img.gz is 4.71 GB.

The cloning process using dd took 916.149 seconds, which is about 15 minutes.

Taking about 15 minutes to clone Debian 13.4.0 KDE Plasma installation on Edxis Chromebook is relatively fast.

Restoring from the backup image file

=====================================

# gunzip -c emmc.img.gz | dd of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4M status=progress conv=fsync

Once dd finishes:

# sync

Then reboot:

# reboot

🔍 What this does

gunzip -c emmc.img.gz → decompress image to stdout

| → pipe into dd

dd of=/dev/mmcblk0 → writes directly to your eMMC

bs=4M → good performance

status=progress → shows progress

conv=fsync → ensures all data is flushed to disk (important on restore)

I don't think I will be using Acronis True Image, Clonezilla, Rescuezilla, or fsarchiver any more since using dd is very fast. About 15 minutes only. And it resulted in only 1 backup image file which is what I have always wanted.

1 backup image file is easier to manage.

Regards,

Mr. Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming

Extremely Democratic People's Republic of Singapore

9 Apr 2026 Thursday 5.29 pm Singapore Time

REFERENCES

============

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2026/04/msg00124.html

[2] https://mail-archive.com/debian-user@lists.debian.org/msg822307.html

[3] https://marc.info/?l=debian-user&m=177572969710732&w=2

[4] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mmc/tfcJ0dgWfa_aVegkJ4Et4mzX0ma1NUVjeuQfLBTMZcVDLXnp_sgZtnSiOCJ9_JJlxqvxnGQjl-BNnf8-8n3l0NpZ3_X9OgbVaDxMPXkzsKo=@protonmail.com/

[5] mail-archive.com - NIL

[6] https://marc.info/?l=linux-mmc&m=177573260512641&w=2