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I am trying to backup my system but i have two partitions, system_image and system.. from inspection i can see that system_image is bigger and the format is ext4, While system is smaller and the format is emmc ..
I may have the formats (emmc,ext4) in the wrong order.
What do i back up, system or system_image ?
I also have system modifications that I'd like to keep in the backup.
Device : Android 5.1
this concerns TWRP only and is just a different method for backup & restore
have a look in /etc/recovery.fstab
you will see the same partition is listed twice
/system ext4 /dev/block/bootdevice/by-name/system flags=slotselect
/system_image emmc /dev/block/bootdevice/by-name/system flags=slotselect
first entry is listed as ext4 file system type which tell TWRP the partition is mountable. in case of backup / restore only the content (files) are archived into system.ext4.win (tarball archive)
second entry is listed as emmc which makes TWRP think it is raw disk image. in case of backup / restore the whole partition (including empty space) is cloned bitwise into full partition image system.emmc.win (dd image)
usually /system is sufficient for backup purposes.
/system_image is useful for restoring foreign ROM or backup of corrupt data
Note: for system-as-root devices the mount point is changed into /system_root while /system is just a symlink (or bind mount) of /system_root/system (which is not a representative of whole partition)
system_image. So if that should be specific to Android 5.1 and not to the device, something must be wrong with all of my devices. But it's your question, so I leave it at that. Good waiting then.