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Cheers. From what I remember of dd the image it creates is the same size as the disk but in these cases the disks are largely empty so would prefer something that took that into account.
I've got everything I "think" I need in terms of data backed up to another machine or Onedrive. This is really for the stuff that I didn't realise I didn't have that is squirrelled away in a config folder or something rather than somewhere obvious.
aggi
A Linux liveUSB (i.e. the simplest is an Ubuntu install USB but don't install)... and then
dd.https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/easily-clone-restore-linux-disk-image-dd/
What you'll get is just a disk image that is restorable to another disk.
If you want to access the data, just save the data separately... I find a trivial way to do this is Syncthing for the folders I care about and just have it sent to a network... once sync'd, you may nuke the disconnect and then nuke the original hard drive.