FATDUMP(8)                                                          FATDUMP(8)



NAME
       fatdump - Efficiently dump the contents of a FAT volume.

SYNOPSIS
       fatdump [options] device|image

DESCRIPTION
       fatdump will efficiently extract all relevant metadata and (optionally)
       data from an FAT volume and dump it to standard output.   It  works  at
       disk  sector  level  and  copies  only the used data. Unused disk space
       becomes zero.

       fatdump can be useful to make backups,  an  exact  snapshot  of  a  FAT
       filesystem   to   restore   later   on,  or  for  developers  to  trou‐
       bleshoot/investigate users' issues using the clone without the risk  of
       destroying the original filesystem.

OPTIONS
       Below is a summary of all the options that fatdump accepts.  Nearly all
       options have two equivalent names.  The short name is preceded by - and
       the long name is preceded by -- .

       -m, --metadata
              Clone  ONLY METADATA (for FAT experts). A metadata dump contains
              all of the FAT volume structures but none of the user data, i.e.
              all  file  content  will  be omitted but the directory structure
              will be preserved. The output from this command  will  be  rela‐
              tively small if compressed.

       -n, --ntfsclone-image
              Emit an ntfsclone packed image (special image format) as output.
              This saves space since all the non-allocated regions (and in the
              case  of  '-m'  /'--metadata' all the non-metadata regions) will
              not be written out explicitly, but instead marked as a 'hole' in
              the image.

       -q, --quiet
              Suppress non-error output on stderr.

       -f, --force
              Force a clone, ignoring errors from cluster accounting.

EXIT CODES
       The exit code is 0 on success, non-zero otherwise.

EXAMPLES
       Dump FAT file system on /dev/sda1 to a compressed metadata image:

              fatdump /dev/sda1 | bzip2 > sda1.img.bz2

       Dump  FAT  file  system  metadata on /dev/sda1 to a compressed metadata
       image:

              fatdump -m /dev/sda1 | bzip2 > sda1.img.bz2

       Dump a FAT volume to a remote host, using ssh. Please note that ssh may
       ask for a password!

              fatdump /dev/sda1 | bzip2 | ssh host 'cat > sda1.img.bzip2'


KNOWN ISSUES
       There  are no known problems with fatdump.  If you think you have found
       a problem then please send an email describing it  to  fat-support@tux‐
       era.com.

AUTHORS
       fatdump was written by Sougata Santra, Tuxera Inc.

AVAILABILITY
       fatdump is part of the Tuxera FAT package.

SEE ALSO
       fatdebug(8)



Tuxera TFATprogs 3014.9.11         June 2013                        FATDUMP(8)
