Hacking Creating a 1:1 image of an external drive?

[Joom]

So with Mojave around the corner, I'm wanting to wipe out my Mac and do a fresh install (it's never had one, and has been running since 2015). Problem is that I use my external hard drive for my Wii U titles, and I have nearly a TB of data that needs to be backed up from my Mac. Since Nintendo has finally decided to care about CDN downloads, I'm wondering if I can image the drive using dd, then re-image it after I'm done. Has anyone attempted this?

 

[Uumas]

Haven't attempted, but as long as you restore to the same drive, I don't see why it wouldn't work.
Backup your saves before trying though.

 

[Joom]

I suppose I'll attempt it tomorrow. I just wish we knew more about this filesystem so that I don't do this blindly.

 

[ry755]

It should work. Since dd makes an exact copy, it doesn't matter what file system it has.

 

[oslo83]

U could try by testing on a little usb flashcard before...