FreeBSD ZFS Backup & Restore Full Instructions

Ok in my search for a way to shrink a zfs partition (which you can not do) I found a bunch of articles on the FreeBSD website.

I appreciate all the information on "how to" backup a zfs volume and the restore it on another drive fully in tact.

Issue is the restore part was way more complicated trying to use the "LiveCD"

That being said here is how you do it.

• You can backup to a network share or a portable usb drive Drive or network share must be the same size or larger of the size of data. Example if you are backing up a 2TB system you will need an external 2TB drive Or 2TB avaliable on the nfs network share

• Next you need to consider the following FreeBSD Live CD does not allow mounting of zfs pools etc (which you dont want anyways for a restore) Once logged into the LiveCD you WILL need to zfspool import zroot It will not mount but it loads the drivers to access the volume