search for: sparse_filesytem_image

...create and format a new sparse filesystem, and use tar (or two tar''s actually) to duplicate the old filesystem to the new. You could easily break this into two scripts as well and actually store the tar for backup purposes if you wanted. cd /location/of/filesytem/image dd if=/dev/zero of=sparse_filesytem_image bs=1 count=0 seek=4GB mkfs.ext3 -F sparse_filesytem_image mkdir /mnt/dest mkdir /mnt/source mount sparse_filesystem_image /mnt/dest -o loop mount old_filesystem_image /mnt/source -o loop cd /mnt/source tar -cpVSO * | tar -xC /mnt/dest umount /mnt/dest umount /mnt/source That should produce a perfe...