+This will only send the metadata information, without any data blocks.
+However, the filenames in the directory blocks can still reveal
+information about the contents of the filesystem that the bug reporter
+may wish to keep confidential. To address this concern, the
+.B \-s
+option can be specified. This will cause
+.B e2image
+to scramble directory entries and zero out any unused portions
+of the directory blocks before writing the image file. However, the
+.B \-s
+option will prevent analysis of problems related to hash-tree indexed
+directories.
+.PP
+Note that QCOW2 image created by
+.B e2image
+is regular QCOW2 image and can be processed by tools aware of QCOW2 format
+such as for example
+.BR qemu-img .
+.PP
+You can convert a qcow2 image into a raw image with:
+.PP
+.br
+\ \fBe2image \-r hda1.qcow2 hda1.raw\fR
+.br
+.PP
+This can be useful to write a qcow2 image containing all data to a
+sparse image file where it can be loop mounted, or to a disk partition.
+Note that this may not work with qcow2 images not generated by e2image.
+.PP
+Options
+.B \-b
+.I superblock
+and
+.B \-B
+.I blocksize
+can be used same way as for raw images.
+.PP
+.SH INCLUDING DATA
+Normally
+.B e2image
+only includes fs metadata, not regular file data. The
+.B \-a
+option can be specified to include all data. This will
+give 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 or QCOW2 formats. The
+.B \-p
+switch may be given to show progress. 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), the
+.B \-c
+option which cause e2image to try reading a block from the destination
+to see if it is identical to the block which
+.B e2image
+is about to copy. If the block is already the same, the write can be
+skipped. The
+.B \-n
+option will cause all of the writes to be no-ops, and print the blocks
+that would have been written.
+.PP
+.SH OFFSETS
+Normally a filesystem starts at the beginning of a partition, and
+.B e2image
+is run on the partition. When working with image files, you don't
+have the option of using the partition device, so you can specify
+the offset where the filesystem starts directly with the
+.B \-o
+option. Similarly the
+.B \-O
+option specifies the offset that should be seeked to in the destination
+before writing the filesystem.
+.PP
+For example, if you have a
+.B dd
+image of a whole hard drive that contains an ext2 fs in a partition
+starting at 1 MiB, you can clone that fs with:
+.PP
+.br
+\ \fBe2image \-aro 1048576 img /dev/sda1\fR
+.br
+.PP
+Or you can clone a fs into an image file, leaving room in the first
+MiB for a partition table with:
+.PP
+.br
+\ \fBe2image -arO 1048576 /dev/sda1 img\fR
+.br
+.PP
+If you specify at least one offset, and only one file, an in-place
+move will be performed, allowing you to safely move the filesystem
+from one offset to another.