-filesystems and how many inodes are in use. For a typical 10 gigabyte
-filesystem, with 200,000 inodes in use out of 1.2 million inodes, the
-image file will be approximately 35 megabytes; a 4 gigabyte filesystem with
-15,000 inodes in use out of 550,000 inodes will result in a 3 megabyte
-image file. Image files tend to be quite
-compressible; an image file taking up 32 megabytes of space on
-disk will generally compress down to 3 or 4 megabytes.
-.PP
-.SH RESTORING FILESYSTEM METADATA USING AN IMAGE FILE
-.PP
-The
-.B \-I
-option will cause e2image to install the metadata stored in the image
-file back to the device. It can be used to restore the filesystem metadata
-back to the device in emergency situations.
+file systems and how many inodes are in use. For a typical 10 Gigabyte
+file system, with 200,000 inodes in use out of 1.2 million inodes, the image
+file will be approximately 35 Megabytes; a 4 Gigabyte file system with 15,000
+inodes in use out of 550,000 inodes will result in a 3 Megabyte image file.
+Image files tend to be quite compressible; an image file taking up 32 Megabytes
+of space on disk will generally compress down to 3 or 4 Megabytes.
+.PP
+If
+.I image-file
+is
+.BR \- ,
+then the output of
+.B e2image
+will be sent to standard output, so that the output can be piped to
+another program, such as
+.BR gzip (1).
+(Note that this is currently only supported when
+creating a raw image file using the
+.B \-r
+option, since the process of creating a normal image file, or QCOW2
+image currently
+requires random access to the file, which cannot be done using a
+pipe.
+
+.SH OPTIONS
+.TP
+.B \-a
+Include file data in the image file. Normally
+.B e2image
+only includes fs metadata, not regular file data. This option will
+produce an image that is suitable to use to clone the entire FS or
+for backup purposes. Note that this option only works with the
+raw
+.RI ( \-r )
+or QCOW2
+.RI ( \-Q )
+formats. In conjunction with the
+.B \-r
+option it is possible to clone all and only the used blocks of one
+file system to another device/image file.
+.TP
+.BI \-b " superblock"
+Get image from partition with broken primary superblock by using
+the superblock located at file system block number
+.IR superblock .
+The partition is copied as-is including broken primary superblock.
+.TP
+.BI \-B " blocksize"
+Set the file system blocksize in bytes. Normally,
+.B e2image
+will search for the superblock at various different block sizes in an
+attempt to find the appropriate blocksize. This search can be fooled in
+some cases. This option forces e2fsck to only try locating the superblock
+with a particular blocksize. If the superblock is not found, e2image will
+terminate with a fatal error.
+.TP
+.BI \-c
+Compare each block to be copied from the source
+.I device
+to the corresponding block in the target
+.IR image-file .
+If both are already the same, the write will be skipped. This is
+useful if the file system is being cloned to a flash-based storage device
+(where reads are very fast and where it is desirable to avoid unnecessary
+writes to reduce write wear on the device).
+.TP
+.B \-f
+Override the read-only requirement for the source file system when saving
+the image file using the
+.B \-r
+and
+.B \-Q
+options. Normally, if the source file system is in use, the resulting image
+file is very likely not going to be useful. In some cases where the source
+file system is in constant use this may be better than no image at all.
+.TP
+.B \-I
+install the metadata stored in the image file back to the device.
+It can be used to restore the file system metadata back to the device
+in emergency situations.