Full-disk backup in Duplicati captures drive structures at the sector level, including GPT/MBR partition tables and OS installation files. Extending native disk imaging to Linux and macOS ensures complete system recovery in the event of hardware failure, drive corruption, or OS degradation.

Partition-Level Targeting

Rather than forcing an all-or-nothing backup of entire physical drives, Duplicati 2.4 introduces granular partition targeting. Administrators can select specific partitions (such as /dev/sdb or /dev/sdb1 on Linux, or specific raw volumes on macOS) as backup sources without configuring complex path-exclusion filters. During recovery, users can restore an entire physical drive or perform partition-to-partition restores onto target drives.

Administrative Privilege Requirements

Because sector-level imaging reads raw physical storage blocks directly, running full-disk or partition backups requires elevated permissions:

• Linux: Duplicati must run as root or via a systemd daemon executing under root privileges to access raw block devices (/dev/sdX or /dev/nvmeXnX).

  
  

• macOS: Elevated root execution and System Preferences "Full Disk Access" permissions are required to read raw disk identifiers (/dev/diskX).

  
  

Unmounting Partitions for Restore

To maintain data integrity during recovery operations, target partitions must be unmounted before restoring raw sector data. Overwriting an active, mounted filesystem risks kernel panics and block corruption. Restores should be conducted from a secondary OS instance, live media, or after unmounting non-system volumes.

Fleet Management for Mixed Environments

For IT administrators overseeing cross-platform deployments, Duplicati 2.4 standardizes bare-metal protection policies across Windows, macOS, and Linux endpoints. Combining block-level deduplication, zero-trust encryption, and cloud storage flexibility allows fleet-wide disaster recovery to be managed from a single operational framework.