> dd would do it, but at great cost in flexibility (can’t back up to a smaller disk, or select files) and speed I mean if we are talking about copying the whol

> dd would do it, but at great cost in flexibility (can’t back up to a smaller disk, or select files) and speed I mean if we are talking about copying the whole OS or disk, that is a very macro operation. The fine-tuning can be done at the target location after copy like removing unwanted files/resizing partitions etc. No idea how slow would dd be but I thought you could specify larger blocksize for better performance (hoping someone more knowledgeable on dd can add their views).